Food and Drug
by rbnnybt
Summary: Starring Reid and Prentiss at the FDA, and featuring Bambi, Thumper, Flower, and brain drain.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Author's Note: Here is the third in my series of stories starring Reid and each character in turn. A full list of titles is on my profile page. If you understand the quantum physics knock-knock joke that opens the story, congratulations. If you don't understand it, congratulations as well. I'm happy to explain if anyone PM's me, or we can just leave it as is and chalk it up as a Special Reid Moment. :)

* * *

Chapter 1

"Knock, knock," Reid broke the comfortable silence in the BAU bullpen.

"Whooooooo's there?" Morgan asked wearily from a pile of paperwork on his desk.

"Schroedinger's Cat," Reid replied, barely able to contain his mirth in the face of the upcoming punchline.

"Schroedinger's Cat who?" Emily asked brightly as she swiveled around in her chair.

"Schroedinger's Cat...Wanted...Dead AND Alive!" Reid cracked up, bending his head over his knees in a fit of uncontrollable laughter.

Emily paused for a second, thought back to a physics course that she had accidentally signed up for in college, retrieved the only physics concept that she had stored in long-term memory, and burst out laughing as well. She laughed so hard that she lost control of her epiglottis, the flap of tissue at the back of the throat that directed food and drink into the stomach rather than the lungs whenever the glutton swallowed. A mouthful of delicious black coffee wormed its dendritic streams into Emily's trachea, bronchi, and alveoli. Emily doubled over, cringing and coughing, part of her mind still delighting in Reid's hilarious quantum physics knock-knock joke, another part of her mind already cursing at Reid for instigating her choking fit.

Morgan pushed his chair away from his desk, stood up, gathered up his paperwork, and snuck away in silent resignation. The two insufferable dorks tried to get a hold of themselves.

"God, Reid," Emily huffed and puffed a lingering thimbleful of coffee from her nostrils. "Why do you have to tell your science jokes when I'm eating and drinking?"

"Because I know that you find them funny, and I enjoy watching you choke on your food and drink when you laugh at them?" Reid grinned evilly.

"That's not nice," Emily narrowed her eyes. "That's really mean," she pouted as she stood up to put on her jacket.

"Hey Emily, I'm sorry..." Reid stood up anxiously, misinterpreting Emily's mock anger as true anger. "Emily, where are you going?"

"I'm kidding, Reid," Emily grabbed her purse and car keys. "I'm heading out early today. I'm taking the afternoon off to attend a fundraiser for my mother's new job."

"Oh good, for a second there, I thought that you were really mad at me," Reid sighed in relief. "I'll continue to follow my established protocol for making you choke on your food, drink, and own saliva then. Hey, I didn't know that your mother had a new job. Did she quit her position at the State Department?"

"Yeah, she did," Emily replied. "After that Russian mob case, she changed her mind about pursuing another diplomatic appointment. She started working with non-governmental aid organizations, providing educational opportunities for young women in developing countries. She was telling me that the education of young women was the key to pulling entire populations out of poverty. She just turned 65 last week. I think this is a great semi-retirement for her. She can take it a bit slower, enjoy her charitable work, know that she's still able to contribute from her position, socialize with like-minded people...It's a win-win situation."

"Oh great," Reid approved. "It's a far cry from staring at eviscerated bodies and brains in jars all day, isn't it?"

"No kidding," Emily said, "Maybe I should reconsider my own career path."

"No, Emily, I think you..." Reid stopped at a teasing smirk from Emily, realizing that he had misinterpreted her statement, relieved that Emily had no intention of leaving the BAU. "Well, have a good weekend, Emily. See you on Monday."

"Alrighty then, see you on Monday," Emily headed towards the elevator. "If Morgan asks, tell him that I've gone to the dentist. Otherwise, he'll want his own time off to cuddle up with his Halloween Honey or whatever," she shuddered in true disgust. "Oh, and Reid?" she pressed the "Down" button and turned back towards the bullpen.

"Yeah, Emily?"

"I'll keep an eye out for Schroedinger's Cat...Wanted...Dead AND Alive!" Emily snorted her way into the elevator.

Reid snorted on his own in the bullpen, until Rossi noticed and stepped out of his office to demand an explanation. Reid told his quantum physics knock-knock joke. Rossi buried his face in his hands and stomped back into his office. There, he closed the door and pulled down the blinds, the better to block out the infectious dork waves emanating from the now deserted bullpen.

* * *

"Mom! Mom! Be careful!" Emily rushed over to catch her mother before Elizabeth could fall to the hardwood floor.

"Mom, what's wrong?" Emily asked anxiously.

"I...I don't know," Elizabeth replied, rubbing at her eyes with one hand while steadying herself with the other. "I guess I blacked out for a second? It wasn't exactly a blackout. It was more like everything going gray, then white, and I was falling, then you caught me..."

"How do you feel now?" Emily examined her mother's eyes. "Maybe we should go to the emergency room."

"My head...It hurts a lot...Stabbing, shooting pains in my forehead...Not like any migraine I've ever had...No pounding though...And I'm dizzy, even when I'm not moving..."

"That's it," Emily decided, "We've got to go to the hospital. I'm not taking no for an answer," she answered a resisting look from her mother. "Here...Slowly...Try to stand up...Put your weight on my arms," she helped her mother to a standing position.

"Do you think you can make it downstairs?" Emily asked, glancing down the upstairs hallway of Elizabeth's townhouse.

"What stairs? What's going on? Where am I?" Elizabeth gazed at her daughter in confusion.

"Mom, we're at home," Emily smoothed her mother's hair away from her face. "Here...I've changed my mind...Let's sit you down," she lowered her mother gently into a leather armchair in the master bedroom. "Let's not take any risks. I'm going to call the paramedics," she dialed 911.

Much to Emily's relief, it took only two minutes for her to explain the situation to the 911 operator. Elizabeth sat quietly, staring intently across the room. Emily followed her gaze to a dark mahogany dresser, seeing nothing on it, above it, or near it that would command her mother's undivided attention. From her own maternal instincts, she draped an afghan, one that she had crocheted herself, across her mother's shoulders. Emily didn't know how the afghan was supposed to help, but the soft comforting gesture gave her a measure of strength. She patted her mother on the knees and dashed down the stairs to welcome the paramedics.

In the ambulance, on the way to Streyer University Medical Center, Elizabeth Prentiss began seizing. She fell backwards against the gurney, her head hitting its padded surface as her body rocked violently in unpredictable heaves and twitches that did not match the pattern of any recognizable class of seizures. The paramedics backed away, one of them slipping a small pillow under her head as her body flailed upwards for a second. Emily strained towards the gurney, but felt herself wrenched backwards by a pair of strong hairy arms.

"No, ma'am, no!" the paramedic yelled. "We have to let it run its course! She'll hurt herself if we try to restrain her!"

"What if she swallows her tongue? What if she chokes to death?" Emily screamed, realizing that this was not the first time that she had witnessed such a scene.

The scene felt much more real in person than through a webcam. In person, Emily could see the spittle sliding down the side of her mother's face as the paramedic guided her head to one side. She could hear the banging of her mother's heels against the edge of the gurney as the paramedic slid a blanket under her feet to soften the impact. Most of all, in person, Emily could see that the person seizing, choking, and dying in front of her was her own mother, and there was nothing that Emily think of to save her mother, not even if she carved up her brain into tiny little compartments that never communicated with each other.

At the hospital, a team of medical personnel in multi-colored scrubs rushed the ambulance. They surrounded the gurney as they wheeled Elizabeth into the emergency room. A nurse offered Emily an arm to lean on as she passed through the automatic doors. Emily felt a tear roll down her cheeks, then another and another and another. She repressed the involuntary response, but not in time to hide her distress from the strangers in the waiting room. They stared at her, some in sympathy, others in curiosity, depending on the extent of their own medical issues. She sank into a chair behind a fake green plant and dug her cell phone out of her pocket. Through the fog of fear and panic and pain that enveloped her, Emily speed-dialed the first number within her shaky fingers' grasp. The phone rang and rang and rang, and Emily was just about to hang up before a sleepy voice answered.

* * *

"Knock, knock," said Thumper, thumping his animated paw pads against the forest floor.

"Who's there?" asked Bambi, wobbling on his skinny unsteady legs.

"Schroedinger's Cat," said Flower, rolling his large round eyes and sticking out his striped tail in exasperated warning.

"Schroedinger's Cat who?" asked Bambi, twitching his tiny white tail in time with his swaying legs.

"Schroedinger's Cat...Wanted...Dead AND Alive!" laughed Thumper, clapping his front paws together in a fluffy dance of mirth.

"Pooooooof!" Flower released a spray of foul-smelling skunkish musk.

"Ewwwwwww!" Thumper bounced away in disgust, trying to wrap his bunny ears far enough across his face to block off his pink nose.

"Flower!" Bambi admonished the gloating skunk. "I thought you promised that..."

Reid never heard what Flower had promised to do before his cell phone jolted him out of his dream.

"Hhhhhhhlllllllo?" he answered drowsily.

"Hello? Who is this?" a voice asked through loud sniffling noises.

"Uh...This is Dr. Spencer Reid...Who is this?" Reid asked, sitting up from his couch where he had fallen asleep while watching classic Disney movies.

"Emily," the voice replied. "It's Emily...It's my mom, Reid...She's sick...With a headache and seizures, and they wheeled her in, and the nurses won't let me get near her...I don't know what to do...Can you come...I'm sorry to bother you...Can you come over tonight?"

"It's OK, Emily," Reid said. "I'll be over as fast as I can. Now, tell me where you are...Which hospital, which emergency room?"

"Streyer," Emily replied, "The Trauma Center. Sorry, Reid, I don't mean to bug you during the weekend. I'm just...I don't even know..."

"You did the right thing, Emily," Reid comforted his friend, "The exact right thing, in every single way. Your mom got sick, you took her to the ER, you called me...I'm leaving my apartment right now," he grabbed his wallet and keys on his way out the door. "I'll be there in twenty minutes or less. I'll be there in no time. You wait for the doctors to help your mom, and by the time they come out to explain everything, I'll already be there."

"OK, see you a little bit. Thanks, Reid," Emily sniffled again, feeling much calmer now that she had made an external connection.

She was now calm enough to compartmentalize. Her initial panic gave way to rational thinking, and she prepared herself for the journey ahead, whatever the doctors would tell her when they emerged from the chaos behind the locked doors. She had been surprised to hear Reid's voice through the cell phone. She had not meant to call Reid, of all people. Now, in her rational mind, she assigned the accident to fate. Perhaps it was a stroke of luck. Reid was not a medical doctor, but Emily would bet that he possessed more medical knowledge, at least the theoretical kind, than did any practicing physician. He possessed a greater ability to synthesize that knowledge into meaning than did anyone else she knew. Outside her rational mind, in the part of her brain that made Emily Emily, Emily longed to see her friend and colleague. In the part of her brain that was her, the phone call was not an accident.

Emily had always meant to call Reid, of all people. He was the one who understood weakness.

* * *

Author's Note: This medical opening does not imply bioterror. This story is much weirder than that. Also, the only thing significant to the story about the endless quantum physics knock-knock joke is "Dead AND Alive". I hope it is clear which person is Thumper, which person is Bambi, and which person is Flower. Poor Morgan. :)


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds. All nerdisms are based on reality, but the specifics are made up b/c I am afraid that Big Brother and Big Pharma will hunt me down and strangle me in the middle of the night.

Author's Note: The clues for what is wrong with Emily's mother are buried all over this chapter, hiding in plain sight. Happy hunting! :) Also, this story will raise many many questions in scientific and medical ethics. It is meant to raise them rather than answer them, except when needed to resolve plot points. Most of the time, the opposite action is also appropriate.

* * *

Chapter 2

Emily leaned over Elizabeth's now relaxed face and gave her mother a peck on the cheek, as had been her habit since her rebellious teenage years. Back then, whenever Emily got into trouble, Elizabeth would reprimand her daughter and ground her and withhold her allowance and car. Emily would sulk and refuse to talk to her mother for days at a time, until one night over dinner, when Elizabeth would mention something funny, like a corny science joke that she had cajoled out of her best friend at the FDA, and Emily, resistant at first, would not be able to contain her nerdy delight and would nearly choke to death on her food and drink. The fight would end with a peck on the cheek, of mother and of daughter, and their lives would go on as if no altercation had ever occurred.

Reid watched Emily and Elizabeth from the doorway of the darkened hospital room. It was 4:00 AM, and he was dead tired. He was so tired that he couldn't help feeling a bit of jealousy whenever he looked at Elizabeth Prentiss. Elizabeth slept peacefully in her hospital bed, under the influence of a barbiturate-induced coma. Until the test results came back and the doctors made the diagnosis, the coma was the last line of defense against an unknown enemy. It was an act of desperation, bringing peace to no one but the sleeping patient.

"Emily?" Reid called softly, holding out two cups of coffee.

"Hey," Emily replied, moving from her position beside the bed to the couch just inside the door. "You should go home," she accepted a cup. "You look tired. I'm OK now. I'm going to wait up for rounds in the morning."

"Oh really, Emily?" Reid asked in mock snippiness, "I should go home? I think not. I'm going to wait up for rounds in the morning too," he folded his arms across his chest in a show of stubbornness.

Emily rolled her eyes and punched Reid in the arm. She punched herself to make it up to him.

"I didn't come here to indulge your sadomasochistic fantasies," Reid slurped away half his coffee. "I came here to steal that huge binder from the nurses' station. That's your mother's chart."

"What are you talking about?" Emily asked. "Can't we just ask for the chart to look over it?"

"Apparently not," Reid replied. "I peeked into it, but the nurse, the big hulking one, gave me a dirty look. He cracked his knuckles at me. I ran away to get coffee."

"Why won't they let us look at the chart?" Emily frowned in confusion.

"I think it's 'Doctor's Orders'," Reid said. "Doctors might not want family members peeking into medical charts. It's so easy to sue for malpractice these days. Doctors have to protect themselves somehow, and their first line of defense is to restrict access to the chart. That's where the lawyers would look for evidence of mistakes...Not even blatant mistakes...More like slightly questionable decisions..."

"And what medical decision can't be questioned?" Emily caught his drift.

"Exactly," Reid replied.

"Oh yeah, one more thing," he continued. "I'm going to pretend that I know nothing about science or medicine when we see the doctor at rounds. He might be more forthcoming towards a regular guy who wouldn't have the knowledge to challenge his authority."

"You're going to pretend to be regular guy?" Emily chortled. "We'd better get Garcia over here with her video camera. Morgan's not going to believe it unless we collect documentary evidence."

"Morgan never laughs at my science jokes," Reid remarked.

"Morgan is totally uncool," Emily sank into the comfortable couch, falling into a teenage state of mind now that her mother's condition had been stabilized.

In the back of her mind, in tiny compartments that lined up in neat rows, fear, panic, and pain still floundered, looking this way and that, attempting to recruit nearby compartments onto their growing ends. Nearby compartments floundered as well, attempting to escape the rows that threatened to assimilate them. It was a battle of attrition. Sooner or later, the strongest forces, the ones driven by irrepressible emotion, would win. The light of reason was no match for them. The rational compartments would twist and twitch, re-shaping themselves until they, too, became packets of irrepressible emotion. In the meantime, Emily had only to re-order the compartments every quarter of an hour or so to deal with the tasks at hand.

"Emily?" Reid turned towards his friend in concern.

She stared at the ceiling panels without answering. He sensed her internal battle. It was a battle that was familiar to him, but he employed different methods of fighting it. He wasn't sure which method was better - his or hers. As a profiler, he knew that it was unhealthy for his friend to compartmentalize her emotions, but as a friend, he knew that he had to let things run their course. He was here to help, in whatever way he could, even if he had to pretend to be a regular guy. When Bambi failed, as Thumper knew that Bambi would fail, then Thumper would be there to pick up the slack, and when Thumper failed as well, there was still Flower, foul-smelling or not, whatever the case may be.

"Reid?" Emily waved her cup at her friend as he stared at the fake potted plant beside the couch.

"Emily!" Reid awoke from his daydream, finding Emily awakened from hers as well. "I meant to ask you this earlier, but it was too hectic with all the nurses and doctors going in and out of the room. Let's play Doctor and Patient. Can you detail your mother's medical history for me?"

"Yes, Doctor," Emily re-ordered her compartments. "My mother has always been very healthy. She eats right, exercises, sleeps well. You can tell that she looks young for her age, right? The only thing that she's ever been concerned about is our family history of Alzheimer's Disease."

"Oh," Reid perked up, "I didn't know that you had a family history of Alzheimer's Disease. Is it familial Alzheimer's, one of those autosomal dominant mutations that the affected parent has a 50% chance of passing down to his children? Familial Alzheimer's is quite rare, making up only 1%..." he cut himself short, realizing the inappropriate nature of his intellectual exuberance.

Emily would not wish to discuss her family history of Alzheimer's Disease in terms of statistics, just as Reid would not wish to discuss his family history of schizophrenia in the same terms. Reid did not wish to discuss his family history of schizophrenia in any terms. He had compartmentalized that into the dumpster of his brain, where he also occasionally dwelled on drugs and how fun it was to shoot up on them.

"It's not any of the known familial types," Emily explained. "My grandfather, my mother's father, had Alzheimer's, and so did his sister, my mother's aunt. I think that their mother, my great-grandmother, might have had it as well, but in her time, the disease had not yet been discovered."

"That's a hefty family history," Reid considered. "So your mother has gone in for genetic testing to exclude any of the known mutations?"

"Yeah," Emily replied, "She's always been proactive about her health. She says that she won't let the fear of the disease take over her life. She says that it's always better to know, no matter what the results. And I think that she did all those tests to take the burden off me...So that I wouldn't be faced with taking them when I got older. As long as she didn't have the mutations, I wouldn't have them either."

"Your mother is a very smart woman, Emily," Reid said. "As far as you know, she hasn't been suffering any symptoms, has she?"

"No, no symptoms at all," Emily replied. "She's gone to her neurologist for annual screening since she turned 60. I'm not sure exactly how they screen for Alzheimer's, but I think it involves neuropsychological tests for cognitive function and long-term memory. So far, she's passed all the tests with flying colors, so they've never had to..."

"She's never had any neuroimaging tests done?" Reid interrupted. "No MRIs, no PET scans, no analysis of cerebrospinal fluid for amyloid beta or tau proteins?"

"She never told me about any of those," Emily said. "She doesn't want me to worry about it or think about it too much...for myself, you know..."

"I really want to see her medical records from the neurologist," Reid said. "Oh, don't worry, Emily," he answered her concerned expression, "I don't think that this current crisis has anything to do with Alzheimer's. I mean, I'm not a medical doctor, so I shouldn't even be making these pronouncements. I'm supposed to be a regular guy. But seizures aren't associated with Alzheimer's. They're associated with epilepsy, but your mother has never been diagnosed with that either, and the doctor said that the seizures did not match the pattern of any class of epileptic seizures. Whatever is going on, I don't think it has to do with any common neurological disorders."

"And we're still waiting on the test results for infection," Emily said. "Maybe it's meningitis, something treatable with antibiotics or antivirals."

"Or steroids if the cause is inflammation rather than infection," Reid suggested.

"Steroids for inflammation?" Emily asked. "That makes it sound like my mother's going to become a bodybuilder."

"No, these are not performance-enhancing drugs like anabolic steroids," Reid answered. "I'm talking about corticosteroids, like dexamethasone, that suppress an overactive immune system. Inflammation is the true enemy in meningitis. Inflammation is what causes swelling and brain damage. Regardless of whether the cause is bacterial, viral, or autoimmune, the inflammation is what has to be stopped. Corticosteroids are the main treatment for any type of inflammation anywhere in the body. But all the steroids are related. They all have the same four-ringed sterane skeleton, whether dex or estrogen or cholesterol."

"Cholesterol!" Emily realized something.

"What is it?" Reid asked anxiously.

"My mother also told me that she's been helping her best friend who works at the FDA. She's been participating in a clinical trial for a drug that reduces LDL, bad cholesterol, but may also prevent Alzheimer's."

"One of the statin medications?" Reid asked in excitement. Emily gazed quizzically, so he explained, "They're trying to cure everything with statins now. It's become a miracle drug in the research community. Its original purpose is to inhibit the cholesterol synthesis pathway. Yeah, we all make our own cholesterol," he explained away another quizzical gaze. "We make our own when we don't eat enough of it. Cholesterol isn't just a Big Bad. It has actual cellular functions. Without it, we'd all die. Actually, we wouldn't even exist without cholesterol."

"Anyway, about the statins," Reid continued. "I'm guessing that your mother doesn't know whether she's getting the drug or the placebo. And the participating physicians wouldn't know that either, because clinical trials are double blind studies. Otherwise, the physicians might be biased about the results."

"Do you think that she's having an adverse drug reaction to the statin medication?" Emily asked.

"Statins have been shown to be quite safe," Reid replied. "They do cause liver and muscle problems in a small percentage of patients, but they've never been associated with life-threatening side effects, such as heart attacks and certainly not seizures or other neurological symptoms. That's why doctors prescribe them for otherwise healthy people who might have a moderate LDL problem. Like in those Lipitor and Crestor commercials that we see on TV all the time...Those are statin medications."

"She just started the clinical trial last month," Emily said. "And now this happens. What if this is a new side effect that no one's ever seen before?"

"It's entirely possible," Reid said. "I really wish that I knew for sure whether she was taking the drug or the placebo. But I can't just barge into the FDA and demand information about an ongoing clinical trial. Which statin is being tested?"

"A new one, I think," Emily said, "Maybe it was called 'Vitator'?"

"Vorastatin, also known as Vitator to sound 'good' to patients," Reid air-quoted. "I have an idea," he declared. "I know it's wrong, but if the patient information is stored in databases..." he glanced sideways at Emily.

"Then Garcia could hack into them for us and figure out whether my mother was taking the drug or the placebo," Emily completed the thought.

"I'll call Garcia after rounds," Reid said.

"We can all go to prison together for computer felony fraud counts!" Emily clapped happily. "I bet you'll become someone's bitch."

"Au contraire!" Reid rejected the enticing notion. "I'm just a regular guy now, so I'm not planning to become anyone's bitch. In fact, I'm thinking about acquiring some bitches of my own."

"Oh please," Emily rejected the obviously impossible idea. "As soon as you let fly one of your quantum physics knock-knock jokes..."

"You're right, Emily," Reid set down his empty coffee cup and leaned his head back to clear away his delusions. "I've run out of coffee, and it's starting to affect my intelligence. This is an unacceptable state of affairs. It's your turn to get coffee for us."

"Are you trying to make me your bitch?" Emily asked in mock bitchiness. "Just this one time, Regular Guy," she said on the her way out the door. "By the way," she poked her head back into the room, "Thanks for being here, Reid."

By then, Reid was already asleep on the couch. Coffee was a moot point.

While he slept, Reid dreamt about Thumper, Bambi, and Flower. The three furry friends engaged in an endless conversation that replayed all the bits of data that his brain had picked up over the course of the night. The bits of data fell into a bin, where they were arranged and re-arranged, until they took on a semblance of meaning. They were no longer disordered bits and pieces. They became ordered vesicles, each amorphous little blob holding a crucial collection of related factoids. Reid would not find true meaning in them until all the blobs merged and all the factoids crystallized into a precise molecular structure, like the tertiary structures of proteins that formed bodies, minds, and selves. When the proteins went haywire, whether through their own faults or through the faults of their nucleic acid partners-in-crime, it became the duty of regular guys like Reid, scientific doctors and medical doctors, to intervene to put them right again.

In the face of fear, panic, and pain, everyone had a last line of defense, used to protect one's own sanity. For Emily, it was compartmentalization of her emotions away from her intellect and her imagination. For Reid, it was three furry friends to egg him on in his dreams. With Thumper, Bambi, and Flower at his side, Reid was eager to attack the problem head on. He was no regular guy. He was a genius whose intelligence could barely be quantified, so it was his duty and his duty alone to see the problem, own the problem, and solve the problem.

This way, he would make up for past failures. In the past, one mother had been failed. Reid had grown up since then. He was not going to fail another.

* * *

"She was in the drug group?" Reid spoke into his cell phone on a bright cold Saturday morning outside the hospital doors. "Are you sure about that?"

"Of course I'm sure!" Garcia replied in mock offense. "This is me! I! Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia! Need I remind you that this is the Office of Unmitigated Superiority?"

"Oh sorry," Reid apologized, "I thought I was merely speaking to the Office of Unfettered Omniscience."

"Pffffffft," Garcia blew him off, "The two are one and the same! Hey Reid," she asked seriously, "Should I call the others? I think that Hotch would want to know what's going on with Emily, and he knows Ambassador Prentiss too."

"Um..." Reid considered for a moment, looked around for Emily to return with yet another cup of coffee, saw no activity near the hospital doors, reached a decision that he had no right to reach. "Yeah, call Hotch. Tell him what's going on. Tell him that we, Emily and I, might need time off over the next few days to deal with this."

"Did Emily say that it was OK to call Hotch?" Garcia asked.

"Not exactly," Reid replied. "But come on, it's Hotch we're talking about here. He probably woke up in the middle of the night with a telepathic vision of something going wrong. He's only going to worry about it over the weekend if we don't inform him right away. He'll respect Emily's privacy if she wants him to."

"Just like you're doing right now?" Garcia asked.

"We, Emily and I, agreed together to call you so you could hack into the FDA databases for the drug information!" Reid defended himself.

"Justify, justify, justify," Garcia said. "You just wait until we all go to prison together. I'm sure you're going to end up as someone's bitch."

"Obviously," Reid accepted the enticing notion. "Now, let me ask you one last time. You're sure that Elizabeth Prentiss, age 65, is a patient in the Vitator for Alzheimer's Prevention clinical trial who received the drug and not the placebo?"

"For the last time, Sub-Genius, yes, I'm sure!" Garcia answered in total exasperation.

"Alright, alright, I believe you," Reid jerked his ear away from the angry voice. "Will you be around later today if I need to consult the Office of Blazing Eye-Popping Brillance?"

"Verrrrrrry good!" Garcia was placated by the new terminology. "I sit in a constant state of blazing eye-popping brilliance, awaiting further orders from Mr. Regular Guy," Reid could hear her air-quoting through the cell phone.

"Alright, talk to you later," Reid hung up as Emily approached with four cups of coffee, two for now, two for imediately after the first two. "Hey Emily, feeling better?" he asked.

"Yeah, a walk in the morning air really cleared my head," Emily replied. "Were you just talking to Garcia on the phone? Did she get the information about the drug?"

"She did," Reid said. "I think we have a problem. According to the patient information in the databases, your mother was definitely taking the drug. But when Hank went home after his night shift...Hank's the big hulking nurse who cracked his knuckles at me...I'm afraid of him. Anyway, after Hank left, I took a peek at the latest test results that came in after rounds. None of the tests showed any trace of vorastatin. You specifically asked the doctor to test for it this morning, but it's not showing up in the results. I don't know what medication your mother was taking, but it definitely wasn't vorastatin. I couldn't begin to understand why..."

"Call Hotch," Emily interrupted. "I don't want to drag him away from Jack over the weekend, but something's going on, and we need his approval to go forward."

"To go forward?" Reid raised his eyebrows.

"That clinical trial needs to be investigated," Emily replied, anger and excitement building in her dark brown eyes. "Don't look at me like that, Reid. I'm not going to take no for an answer. That trial needs to be investigated, not just for my mother's sake, but for all the other patients too. These people are volunteers. They signed up to be human guinea pigs. They're doing the pharmaceutical companies and the government a favor by participating in all these clinical trials. If those drugs are contaminated with something else, if that something else is causing the symptoms, they're not going to hear the end of it from me. I don't care if I have to...infiltrate the FDA to...I don't even know..."

"That's an idea, Emily!" Reid spilled half his burning coffee out of his cup as he waved his hand around. "Ow, ow, ow!"

"Here, let me hold that," Emily grabbed the cup while Reid dried his hand on his pants.

"What were you saying?" Emily asked, "What's an idea?"

"Why don't we, you and I, infiltrate the FDA?" Reid widened his eyes. "We can find out what's going with the trials, and maybe we can find a cure for your mother as well. The doctors here don't have a clue. They're just treading water at this point. We could do something about it ourselves," his eyes grew as he stared into Emily's eyes.

"I bet Hotch could arrange it," Emily said confidently. "I'm going to call him right now..." she reached into her pocket for her cell phone.

"No need, Emily," Reid interrupted. "I told Garcia to call Hotch already. He should be calling you soon."

"You told Garcia to call Hotch without asking me first?"

"Uh...I'm sorry, Emily...I know that it wasn't my place...I was just really excited about the fact that the patient information and the test results didn't match up...I promise that I won't do it again...I'm so sorry...I don't even know why I asked Garcia to call Hotch...I was afraid that you'd kill me if I called him myself while you were getting coffee...I thought something fishy was going on, and I wanted to swing things into action right away...I don't know what came over..."

"Reid, Reid! Get a hold of yourself!" Emily clamped Reid's mouth shut. "I swear this whole Regular Guy act is dumbing you down. Of course we have to call Hotch. Who else is going to authorize and arrange our covert operations in the Food and Drug Administration?"

"The more I think about it, the more I think that it's the right thing to do!" Reid exclaimed. "All the information about the clinical trial is at FDA headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. The administrators are there, and the scientist in charge of the trial is currently a visiting scholar there. He's got a temporary office at the FDA to oversee the beginning of the trial. If we can get menial jobs at the FDA, then we can access their offices at night and..."

"What's this about menial jobs?" Emily asked.

"I think we'll have to sneak in under the radar," Reid explained, "As janitors or something..."

"Hmmmmmmm," Emily considered, "I guess you're right. While you're doing both of our toilet-cleaning jobs, I can get into people's offices and look through their computers and notebooks."

"I'm going to ask Hotch to get me a job as a lab technician," Reid decided, "That'll get us access to the labs as well as the offices. You're the one who's going to be cleaning toilets."

"Not if you do both our jobs, Regular Guy!" Emily emphasized Reid's new title.

"Emily," Reid whispered softly into Emily's ear, "I think you're forgetting something. I'm only pretending to be a regular guy to the doctors here. To you, I'm still Dr. Spencer Reid, current super genius and future world dominator."

"In your dreams, Prison Bitch," Emily came up with a new title for Reid, "How are you going to be a future world dominator if you can't even beat me at chess?"

"I can beat you at chess!" Reid screeched. "I played all the possible games in my head. I'm sure I can beat you now!" he followed Emily back through the hospital doors.

"Yeah, whatever," Emily assumed her teenage persona.

She walked down the hallway towards the elevator, eager to return to her position on the couch in the hospital room. It had been a whole thirty minutes since she had seen her mother, and she needed to check back in, just to make sure that nothing had changed in the interim. Emily held out no hope that things had taken a turn for the better. The doctor, the Head of Neurology, had been completely baffled by Elizabeth's condition. The cure would not come from him. It was no longer a cure that Emily needed. Cures were too magical, and magic did not exist in real life. What Emily needed was a solution. Solutions were not magical. Solutions were built up, from cleverness and diligence, from trial and error, from long nights and weekends in the lab or in the office or in the field.

As a profiler, Emily didn't understand her own cognitive processes - how she built solutions to problems represented by rows of gory images tacked up on a bulletin board. It was some mysterious process that had yet to be elucidated. All she understood was her own focus. It had been less than twelve hours since Elizabeth had collapsed, but Emily had already compartmentalized the problem to perfection. Her emotions had been sealed up in boxes and lined up in rows, leaving behind only intellect and imagination. The solution, if she was clever enough and diligent enough, would come to her. If it didn't come to her, it would come to Reid. There was no question in Emily's mind that Reid was clever enough and diligent enough to find a solution. Emily entertained her irrational thoughts as she sipped her coffee in the elevator. Fear, panic, and pain were not so easy to repress after all. She was so absorbed in her irrational thoughts that she didn't even hear Reid explain his own thoughts to her. All she heard was something about a dream that he had this morning, something about how he was Thumper, she was Bambi, and Morgan was Flower. It was the weirdest thing that she had ever heard, but like most of the things that came out of Reid's mouth, it fascinated her.

* * *

P.S. This fanfic'er is really sick of the whole team rolling their eyes at Reid whenever he has a Special Reid Moment. Special Reid Moments 4ever!


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds. Big Brother, you no sue. Big Pharma, you no sue.

Author's Note: There is another quantum physics knock-knock joke in this chapter. I will explain briefly at the end.

* * *

Chapter 3

Unit Chief Aaron Hotchner refused to authorize and arrange a covert operation into the Food and Drug Administration, until a second victim was rushed into the emergency room, seizing with the same pattern of heaves and twitches that had afflicted Elizabeth Prentiss the night before.

"You win," Hotch relented. "But I don't want you disrupting the clinical trial or interrogating the investigators or interviewing the participants until you've gathered ample evidence through other means. You're going to run every step by me, Emily. I'm going to run every step by Section Chief Erin Strauss," he sighed heavily. "PhenoPharm, the pharmaceutical company that patented vorastatin, is very influential on Capitol Hill."

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," Emily agreed to the terms, "Politics," she wrinkled her nose.

Hotch picked up his cell phone to call Rossi, who, along with knowing anyone who was anyone, could also manipulate people into doing whatever he wanted them to do. As he waited for Rossi to answer the phone, he looked over the business card of Dr. Jillian Graham, administrator at the FDA, lifelong friend of Ambassador Elizabeth Prentiss. She would be his next contact, now that she had been ruled out as a suspect in the investigation. Dr. Jillian Graham was not involved in the clinical trial. Like Elizabeth Prentiss, Jillian Graham had hit retirement age, and she was only staying on until the end of the year to tie up the loose ends in her work before she sailed off into a sunset brightened by government pensions and financial security.

Hotch wondered if he would ever sail off into such a sunset. He imagined himself in his old age, puttering around a vegetable garden with a spade and pick, wearing a ridiculous straw hat, attacking the tenacious weeds that encroached upon his cucumber plants. He shook the unappealing image out of his head. He told himself to focus on the task at hand, the bizarre series of steps that he would have to carry out to sneak two FBI agents into the FDA. Someone had broken the rules, someone within the sprawling campus in Silver Spring, Maryland, where it was the duty of the denizens to protect the public, just as it was the duty of a different set of denizens within a different sprawling campus in Quantico, Virginia. Someone had broken the rules, and Unit Chief Aaron Hotchner was no less intent upon rooting out the perpetrator than SSA Emily Prentiss or SSA Dr. Spencer Reid, who was intent in his own state of consciousness as he dozed and drooled on Emily's shoulder.

"I have an idea," said Thumper, thumping his paw pads against the forest floor.

"What kind of idea?" asked Bambi, wobbling and swaying, but managing to stay upright on his spindly legs.

"I can't tell you," said Thumper, "It'll spoil the surprise."

"What kind of surprise?" asked Bambi, wagging his tail and perking up his ears.

"You'll see!" Thumper bounced towards a fern, "You'll see!" Thumper wiggled his ears mysteriously.

"Flower!" Bambi complained to his other friend, "Thumper's being mean to me! He won't tell me what idea he's got, and he won't let me in on his surprise either! I thought that friends were supposed to tell each other everything," Bambi teetered towards the shade of an oak tree.

"Don't you sweat it, Bambi!" Flower declared, "I'll deal with Thumper!" Flower chased after the rotund lagomorph.

"Thumper!" Flower hissed, "Why are you being mean to Bambi?"

"Shhhhhhh," Thumper covered his mouth with his paw. "I'm planning a surprise for Bambi, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to come up with it, so I don't want to disappoint Bambi if I can't. It's a surprise to help Bambi's mother."

"Really?" Flower asked, "Do you really think that you'll be able to help Bambi's mother?"

"That's just it," Thumper coughed up a grayish-white furball, which he discarded into a nearby blueberry bush, "I don't know if I'll be able to, but I'm sure going to try my best. Flower, you have to promise me that you won't tell Bambi a thing."

"OK, Thumper, I promise not to tell Bambi a thing," Flower whispered, "But you have to hear me out, Thumper."

"Hear you out about what?" Thumper asked, furrowing his brow and narrowing his eyes.

"I think you're a scaredy-cat," Flower declared. "You're scared that you won't be smart enough to work out a cure to help Bambi's mother, so you're not even going to tell Bambi that you're working on it. You're afraid of your own mind. You're afraid that your mind will let you down, just like it let you down when you discovered that you couldn't do a thing to help your own mother. Am I right, Thumper?"

"That's enough, Flower!" Thumper huffed in anger. "Haven't you ever heard of the Thumperian Principle?"

"Yes, Thumper," Flower rolled his large round eyes at the tuft of white fur that crowned his head. "How can I possibly forget? You only remind me every other hour! The Thumperian Principle," Flower recited derisively, "If you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all," Flower raised his striped tail and let fly a foul-smelling skunkish spray.

"Ewwwwwww!" Thumper hopped down a rabbit hole, pawing at his ears to clear them of any drops of muskish condensation.

In his warm comfortable rabbit hole, Thumper curled into his favorite dirt pile and considered Flower's words. Flower was right, of course. Flower was annoying, because he was often right. Thumper was afraid of his own mind, afraid of its many inadequacies, afraid of its many past failures. But just because Flower was right didn't mean that Thumper was going to change his mind about the whole operation. He was still going to do what he had set out to do, with the hope that one day, not too far in the future, he would be able to present Bambi with the magical elixir that would help Bambi's mother. Bambi would never know how many hours Thumper labored in the lab, or how many drops of sweat Thumper expended in concentration, or how many federal tax dollars Thumper flushed down the drain. Bambi would only know that his mother was going to be alright, and that was all that Thumper wanted Bambi to know.

Thumper wiped away a tear drop that rolled out of his large brown eyes, moistening his furry cheek and furry paw alike. Bambi's mother would be alright alright, but what about Thumper's own mother?

Reid woke up to find Emily wiping at his face with a tissue.

"Are you OK?" Emily whispered softly, "You were crying in your sleep," she said incredulously.

"Huh? What? No, I wasn't," Reid shook his head in embarassed denial.

"What is this?" Emily held out a wet tissue for his inspection.

"You spit into a wad of Kleenex," Reid concluded, "You're pinning it on me to make fun of me."

"Hotch has agreed to let us infiltrate the Food and Drug Administration," Emily announced, as if infiltrating the Food and Drug Administration were the most natural next step in the course of human events.

"Oh good," Reid wiped away the last of his embarassing tears. "I came up with fake names for us," he distracted Emily from his bloodshot eyes.

"Oh, do tell!" Emily gazed expectantly, her instinct telling her to take mercy upon Reid and to never mention the crying episode in front of Morgan.

"I'll be Derek Dier," Reid pointed at himself.

Emily snickered, "I'm sure that a certain other Derek will be flattered."

"And you'll be Jennifer Issor," Reid pointed at Emily.

"Eyesore?" Emily stared in disbelief, "You're seriously naming me Jennifer Eyesore?"

"Well, I gave you JJ's first name," Reid said, as if this made up for everything. "Besides my name, Rossi's is the only one that sounds like a real name in reverse."

"How about you be Derek Eyesore, and I'll be Jennifer Dier?" Emily suggested.

"Hmmmmmmm," Reid considered, "Hmmmmmmm," he considered further, "Hmmmmmmm," he stopped considering, when he recalled that Thumper was planning to run a covert operation within a covert operation and that Thumper was feeling guilty about keeping secrets from Bambi. "Fine," Reid agreed, "I'll be Derek Eyesore. You'll be Jennifer Dier."

"Yes!" Emily pumped her fist in victory. "Are you hungry, Eyesore? I'm starving," she patted her stomach. "You wanna go to the IHOP down the street? We can have lunch while waiting for Hotch to call us about the arrangements. He says that he'll try to get us in by Tuesday at the latest. Then, you should go home and get some rest. I'll stay until evening rounds before I go home myself. My mom's been stable all day. Her vitals are perfect."

"Sounds good to me," Eyesore replied, lunging up from the couch and putting on the jacket that he had been sitting on for an hour.

Emily stood up as well, stepped to the bed, and gave her mother a peck on the cheek. She led the way out of the hospital room. In the elevator, she heard none of Reid's babblings about clinical trials - phase I this and phase II that and phase III some other thing. She kept repeating one thing in her mind, one thing that started out in one form and re-shaped itself, against her will, into quite another form.

"Jennifer Dier," Emily tested the name, "Emily Dier," Emily tested another name, "Emily Reid," Emily tested a final name.

Emily rubbed at her eyes, disgusted by her own frivolity. She had to dump this teenage persona, the one that appeared whenever she hung around her mother, before it dug its gothic black fingernails into her personal and professional life and held on for good.

* * *

Jennifer Dier wheeled a bucket down the hallway of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research within the sprawling campus of the Food and Drug Administration in Silver Spring, Maryland. She steadied a mop with one hand while pushing open the door of the men's restroom with the other. She slammed the door shut at the sound of a startled high-pitched scream from within.

"Haven't you ever heard of knocking?" Derek Eyesore grumbled.

"Knock, knock," Jennifer Dier knocked.

"Who's there?" Derek asked.

"Wavefunction," Jennifer replied.

"Wavefunction who?" Derek asked.

"Wavefunction...Don't open the door or I'll collapse!" Jennifer laughed uproariously.

Derek guffawed and opened the door, causing Jennifer to collapse to the floor under his observational gaze.

"Did you make that up all by yourself?" Derek inquired.

"I did! I did!" Jennifer declared proudly. "I had to wade through scores of Wikipedia articles to learn all about quantum mechanics, but I made it up all by myself."

"Good one, Jennifer!" Derek patted Jennifer on the back as she snorted up her irrepressible mirth.

"Here," Jennifer handed Derek the mop and bucket, "It's your turn to clean the toilets...I mean, it's always your turn to clean the toilets. I'm going to locate the offices of Dr. Kenneth Lee, Dr. Charlotte Ames, and Dr. Stanley Hawkins. Ames and Hawkins share a temporary office around the corner," she pointed all the way down the long hallway, "And Lee has his own office right above us," she pointed at the ceiling. "The offices are locked behind electronic keypads, and I copied the codes from a list at the security desk while you distracted the security guard with your incompetence."

"Right," Derek nodded, "I distracted him by getting my lab goggles stuck in my hair. He had to help me remove them. That was a good idea, Jennifer. I'm glad that you're around to come up with good ideas like that. Of course, you could've been the one to distract the security guard, and I could've been the one to memorize the codes faster than a speeding..."

"Thanks, Eyesore," Jennifer cut him off. "Now, is there anything I can help you with while you clean the toilets?"

"Hmmmmmmm," Derek considered, "Not really. I already prepared all the cell culture media for tomorrow's experiments, and I already unpacked all the reagents that came in overnight, and I already started defrosting all the -20 freezers. Those were the only things that my boss told me to do tonight, to have everything ready for the scientists by the time they come into lab tomorrow morning."

"OK, toilets it is," Jennifer shoved a bucket of cleaning products through the doorway. "After you're done with those," she pointed at the stalls, "Meet me in the janitor's closet in the nook over there," she pointed towards a very short hallway that intersected the long glistening one.

"OK," Derek agreed, "We can converse freely in the janitor's closet. We don't want to appear too friendly with each other in public, in case someone comes by during the night shift. Once you try out the security codes, we can come up with a specific course of action for the next few days. I'll say 'knock, knock' so you know that it's me and not one of the other janitors."

"Great," Jennifer gave Derek a thumbs-up, "But what if I need to talk to you while there are other people around? Should we set up some kind of hand signal?"

"Yeah, you're right," Derek thought long and hard about a hand signal. "How about this?" he formed his right hand into the Vulcan salute, placed his index and middle fingers on his chin with his thumb pointing upwards above his chin and his ring and pinky fingers pointing upwards below his chin. He wiggled his ring and pinky fingers and explained the system for determining the time interval between Jennifer Dier disappearing from a crowd and Derek Eyesore disappearing from the same crowd, "Each wiggle of the fingers represents one ten-minute interval before I meet you in the janitor's closet," he confided.

Jennifer tested the system using her own hand and chin. She found it difficult to wiggle her ring and pinky fingers while keeping them together in the Vulcan salute.

"How about I wiggle my thumb if I want you to meet me in the janitor's closet, and you wiggle your ring and pinky fingers if you want me to meet you in the janitor's closet?" Jennifer suggested.

"Perfect!" Derek concurred, "You're full of good ideas, Jennifer," he made the sign and wiggled his fingers six times according to the system before disappearing into the men's restroom.

Emily turned away and headed down the hallway, towards the shared office of Drs. Ames and Hawkins, the scientific and medical leads on the clinical trial. They had only been at the FDA for a few weeks, overseeing the clinical trial and training physicians on the proper use of the medication, whether drug or placebo. Upstairs, Dr. Lee served as the administrator in charge of the clinical trial. The three of them - the administrator, the scientist, and the physician - were the primary suspects in the investigation. One of them, two of them, or all three of them was subsituting an unknown chemical or biological agent in place of vorastatin medication in a clinical trial, for all the patients or for a select group of patients, and Emily was not going to drop her faux janitor persona until she dug up the whole truth and nothing but the truth. One, two, or all three of their worlds was going to collapse under her observational gaze. Stated another way, if she and her partner-in-crime were smart enough, then the wavefunction would collapse to an analytical solution. As long as she was careful to turn her observational gaze outwards at the world rather than inwards at herself, then she did not have to worry about doors opening when and where they shouldn't.

Back in the men's restroom, Reid was not going to give up his faux technician persona either, not until he came up with a cure for an undiagnosed disorder displaying a set of symptoms previously unknown to medical science. He leaned the mop against the wall, taking a break from his obsessive bleaching of the counters and mopping of the floors. He dialed Garcia, silently apologizing for waking her up at 3:00 AM.

"Hhhhhhhlllllllo?" a sleepy voice answered the phone.

"Garcia?" Reid asked, "Is this the Office of Blazing Eye-Popping Brilliance?"

"You know it is, Eyesore," Garcia replied. "What do you waaaaaaant?" she yawned. "Is something wrong?" she awakened to full alertness.

"No, no, no, nothing's wrong," Reid reassured Garcia. "Remember what I told you in your office today, while everyone else was taking a break for lunch?"

"Your plan about working on a cure for Emily's mother?" Garcia asked.

"Yes," Reid replied, "I need to order some chemical and biological reagents for future experiments, along with several neuronal cell lines. I don't know exactly what I'll need until we figure out what's wrong with Emily's mother, but there are some basic reagents that I'll need for any biological experiment involving mammalian cells. Can you make up a list of account numbers for me to use? Get them out of the FDA employee database, but only from the CDER division. I'm going to use them to buy reagents for myself."

"Don't you have plenty of reagents in the lab?" Garcia asked.

"We do, but they're not mine," Reid explained. "Some of these researchers are very possessive of their reagents and very territorial about their lab space. I'm just a lowly lab tech...Mr. Regular Guy. I've defrosted an old freezer and cleared some cabinet space for my reagents. I'll be the first one to get my hands on them, since supplies usually come in overnight, and I'm in charge of unpacking and delivering them to all the researchers. I'll need you re-route all my orders to my lab. Otherwise, they'll end up all over the division."

"How am I going to know which purchase orders are yours if you use a different account number every time you order something?" Garcia asked.

"The purchase orders are forms that are filled out and submitted as a spreadsheet. I'm going to make a notation in a random cell of the spreadsheet, in row 956 or whatever, all the way down the page. It'll be in a different cell each time. You'll have to hunt for it, but no one else is going to scroll that far down in the spreadsheet."

"What sweet nothings are you going to leave for me, my sweet genius?" Garcia awakened further, enough to commence a flirting sequence.

"Hmmmmmmm," Reid hesitated, thinking over all the sweet nothings he knew. Finding that he knew no sweet nothings, he came up with something sweeter than all the sweet nothings combined, "e, i, pi, 1, 0," he chuckled through the phone.

"e, i, pi, 1, 0?" Garcia repeated back in confusion. "What the heck kind of sweet nothing is that?"

"Tsk, tsk, Garcia," Reid flirted the only way he knew how. "How can you not remember such simple math? Think, Garcia, think! Think back to your distant college days, when you trudged, uphill both ways, through the non-existent snow, when you slogged, all eye bugars and tangled locks, to Math 1 every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, at the horribly ungodly hour of 9:00 AM..."

"Euler's Identity!" Garcia remembered, "e to the power i times pi plus 1 equals 0! The most beautiful equation in all of mathematics! Containing five fundamental mathematical constants! e, i, pi, 1, 0!"

"Exaaaaaaactly," Reid snorted at his own and Garcia's combined cleverness. "I knew your formal Caltech education would come in handy someday, just like your informal self-education comes in handy everyday."

"OK, sweet genius, I shall whip up some code to scan through all CDER purchase orders in the purchasing database, looking for a beautiful pattern of letters and digits in row 956 or whatever, thus pointing me to your purchases, thus allowing me to re-route your purchases to your lab, where you will collect them for your own purposes, and the poor fellows whose account numbers were abused will be none the wiser!"

"Thanks, Garcia," Reid said.

"And I shall email you a list of account numbers for you to abuse. And I shall randomize the order of account numbers for your additional abusing pleasure. And I shall cover your abusive tracks by deleting your purchase orders from the database after you receive your reagents."

"Great, I await your display of blazing eye-popping brilliance, Office of Blazing Eye-Popping Brilliance."

"Ugh, not that tiresome old name again," Garcia complained.

"How about the Office of Earth-Shattering Exemplitude?" Reid suggested.

"Not bad for a newbie," Garcia replied, "Not bad for a Regular Guy. Who cares about real words anyway?"

"Real words are overrated," Reid agreed. "Um...I have to finish cleaning some toilets, Garcia. I'll talk to you later today, when I check in at the office before my next shift. Sorry to wake you up in the middle of the night."

"For Derek Eyesore and Jennifer Dier, anything!" Garcia declared. "Is Jennifer Dier going to help you with your little experiments?"

"Of course," Derek Eyesore lied, "Jennifer Dier is one of us at heart. She came up with this really funny quantum physics knock-knock joke. You've gotta hear it. Here, let me tell it to you right now. Knock, knock."

"Who's there?" Garcia asked.

"Wavefunction."

"Wavefunction who?"

"Wavefunction...Don't open the door or I'll collapse!"

Garcia cackled loudly, stopped herself in a fit of uncharacteristic self-consciousness, decided that she was way too smart to indulge in self-consciousness, and cackled loudly again.

"Goodbye, Eyesore," she hung up.

Reid pocketed his cell phone in his lab coat and turned towards the toilets. Before starting his distasteful work, he checked the lock on the door of the men's restroom. If anyone walked in, it would look awfully weird for the new lab tech to be cleaning toilets rather than preparing cell culture media or autoclaving lab equipment or dispensing liquid nitrogen. He felt a little guilty about lying to Garcia after asking her to assist him with his doubly covert operation. He reminded himself that he had no other choice. The human brain, even his brain, had its limits, and even if it did not, this was the sticky dirty world of cells and tissues and organisms, not the squeaky clean world of e, i, pi, 1, 0. This world, governed by a single paradigm, was not a forgiving one. This was the world of biology, and the single paradigm that governed it, stronger in its conviction than any single paradigm that governed any other world, was evolution by natural selection.

In the face of such harshness, Thumper did not need another furry friend, in addition to Flower, to tell him that he was afraid of his own inadequate mind. He knew that all too well already.

* * *

"Yeah, Emily?" Reid answered his buzzing cell phone just as he finished wiping the mirrors in the men's restroom.

"Janitor's closet...Now!" Emily ordered.

"You got something?" Reid asked, his heart rate accelerating like that of a prey animal being chased down by its predator.

"Yeah," Emily replied, "I'll tell you when you get here. Oh, by the way, I've changed my mind about the hand signal. Can we drop the Vulcan salute? We can just text each other if we need to talk."

"We're dropping the Vulcan salute?" Emily could imagine Reid's face falling into a sad, almost pathetic, expression of doe-like disappointment.

"Never mind," Emily changed her mind again, "We're keeping the Vulcan salute. Who cares if we look like a pair of circus freaks? I'm a lowly janitor, and you're a lowly lab tech. No one's going to pay any attention to us."

"Oh good, you're only joking with me," Reid breathed a sigh of relief, pulling the mop-bucket combo with him as he exited the men's restroom. "Can you at least give me a little clue about what you've found?"

"Janitor's closet...Now!" Emily hung up.

* * *

Quantum physics knock-knock joke: In certain popular interpretations of quantum mechanics, a wavefunction describing a physical system is a combination of all possible states until someone observes the system, at which point the wavefunction collapses to a single state. For example, Schrodinger's Cat, in a box with a bottle of cyanide that may or may not be cracked open to release the toxic gas within, is both dead and alive at the same time. Once someone opens the box, the cat wavefunction collapses to either the dead state or the alive state, as if it had always been one way or the other rather than a combination of both. If this is your first exposure to such concepts and they make obvious sense to you, then you should check to make sure that no one is slipping mind-altering substances into your drinks. :)


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.

* * *

Chapter 4

"Dr. Kenneth Lee is a snake," Emily waved a digital camera in Reid's face as he squeezed past her into the janitor's closet, mop-and-bucket combo in tow behind him.

"We've only been here for eight hours, and you already know that Dr. Kenneth Lee is a snake?" Reid asked, wiping his disinfectant-covered palms against his lab coat.

"Check out these photos of his office," Emily handed over the camera.

"Let's see here..." Reid scanned the image on the screen. "Dark depressing little room, government-issued IT-locked-down workstation, journal articles and bureaucratic forms on the desk, space-agey FDA logo on the wall, tissues that missed the trash can on the floor...Whoa, what's this?"

"A check for $50,000," Emily pointed out a small rectangular slip of paper on the seat cushion of the swivel chair, lying there as if it had been dropped when its owner had vacated the chair.

"Did you get a close-up?" Reid advanced to the next photo in the camera, then the next and the next and the next, "Ah, you did. A check for $50,000 from PhenoPharm to a 'Sandra Maynard' with an address in College Park, Maryland."

"Dr. Sandra Maynard," Emily said, "Anthropology professor at the University of Maryland...Wife of Dr. Kenneth Lee. I had Garcia look her up. I felt bad about calling Garcia in the middle of the night, but she was already awake. Apparently, some guy with a weird name had woken her up, demanding that she hack into the FDA purchasing database. Good thinking, Reid. If Lee, Ames, and Hawkins are working on something on the side, it might show up in their purchase orders. We, by which I mean you, can do a profile of their purchases to determine what they might be working on."

"Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking," Reid suppressed a sigh of relief and telepathically thanked Garcia for not broadcasting his actual plan. "Meanwhile, what should we conclude from this check, besides the fact that Dr. Kenneth Lee is a snake?"

"That's the problem," Emily said. "The check doesn't really help us, unless we can figure out what Lee is planning to do with the money. Maybe it's a gift from PhenoPharm for pushing the clinical trial through the FDA bureaucracy. Maybe it's something more sinister. Either way, there's no legitimate reason for an FDA administrator to accept money from a pharmaceutical company, is there?"

"No way that I'm familiar with," Reid replied. "Why don't we ask Garcia to do a thorough background check on Lee's wife? She could be a name on a check, or she could be directly involved in the..." he hesitated to call it a plot, then realized that he was huddled up with his partner-in-crime in a janitor's closet at 4:00 AM, "...plot," he finished.

"Good idea," Emily said, "That's another avenue of information for us. You know what we really need? We need some of those pills that my mother was taking. I searched all over her house, but I couldn't find the bottle anywhere."

"What about Isabella Torres, the other victim?" Reid asked. "Maybe we can get some pills from her. Did you get a chance to talk to her mother at the hospital?"

"Yeah, I did, but her mother was totally distraught," Emily replied. "It was all I could do to keep her calm for a few minutes to tell me that her daughter was participating in the clinical trial. I'm going to the hospital for morning rounds after my shift. Maybe I'll see her again, and I can ask her about the pills."

"I'm going to the hospital too," Reid said. "Wanna meet at the IHOP near there for breakfast? Say, around..." he checked his watch, "Quarter to six?"

"You should go home and get some sleep," Emily said, "We still have to check in at the office before our next shift."

"I will, after I go to the hospital," Reid said. "I had Garcia hack into the nurses' shift schedule. Hank doesn't work on Wednesdays. This might be my only chance to memorize the medical charts."

"You're still obsessed with getting your dirty little paws on my mother's medical chart?" Emily asked.

"On the charts, plural," Reid answered, "Hers and Isabella's. I want to compare them. There's something bugging me about the two of them, especially about their specific roles in the clinical trial."

"What do you mean?" Emily asked.

"The clinical trial is a double-pronged study," Reid explained. "One prong is to assess the efficacy of vorastatin as a cholesterol-lowering medication. That's what the drug was designed for, and that can be tested in a matter of months. The other prong is to assess the possibility of vorastatin as a prophylactic for Alzheimer's Disease. Certain other statins have been linked to Alzheimer's prevention, so every pharmaceutical company with a statin wants a piece of the Alzheimer's pie. That would take years to determine. The participants would have to continue taking vorastatin for years after they've already reaped the cholesterol-lowering benefits."

"Do you think that my mother's too old to take part in an extended study?" Emily asked.

"Not at all," Reid replied, "I think that Isabella Torres is too young to take part in such a study. Think about it this way. There's a drug group and a placebo group, and the researchers want to see fewer people develop Alzheimer's in the drug group. Let's say that 10% of the people in the placebo group develop Alzheimer's in five years, and 5% of the people in the drug group develop Alzheimer's in the same time period. In order for the study to be meaningful, a significant proportion of the participants need to develop Alzheimer's. They have to be old enough for disease onset. A 40-year-old, even if she were genetically predisposed for Alzheimer's, is very unlikely to develop it by age 45, but a 65-year-old, with or without a genetic predisposition, might very well develop it by age 70. For the Alzheimer's prevention aspect of the study, the ideal participant cohort would skew older, so the researchers could determine whether their drug made a difference in disease onset. The ideal participant would be someone like your mother, not someone like Isabella Torres."

"Well, we know that the UnSub wasn't interested in vorastatin, not for cholesterol reduction or Alzheimer's prevention," Emily said. "Maybe the ages of the participants don't matter to him."

"But the ages would matter to PhenoPharm," Reid argued. "The company, after spending millions of dollars on research and development, wouldn't want to jeopardize its clinical trial by recruiting unsuitable study participants. I doubt that the UnSub is operating with the knowledge and approval of PhenoPharm, regardless of how many $50,000-checks PhenoPharm hands out to Dr. Lee's wife. The UnSub probably recruited the younger participants for his own purposes and fed them the rogue agent instead of the medication. The younger participants are essentially useless for the Alzheimer's aspect of the study, unless PhenoPharm wants to follow them for the next 30 years. PhenoPharm might consider them legitimate participants if they have a family history of early-onset Alzheimer's, but it's extremely rare for Alzheimer's to develop in anyone under 50. All the younger participants, everyone under 45, is a potential target for the rogue agent."

"Then why would my mother have gotten the rogue agent as well?" Emily asked.

"Maybe there was a mix-up with the pills," Reid suggested. "Honestly, I don't know. It's one of the quadrillion things that we have yet to find out in this case. I'll ask Garcia to get us a list of study participants younger than 45. We can interview them and collect some of their pills for analysis."

"Hotch told us not to disrupt the clinical trial," Emily reminded Reid, "That includes interviewing the participants and collecting their pills."

"But we need a sample of the pills," Reid argued.

"We might be able to get them from Isabella Torres," Emily said. "Let me work on that before you go hunting down any other study participants to scare the crap out of them. We don't go against Hotch's rules, no matter what. It'll be armageddon if a single word of this leaks out into the media."

"Armageddon?" Reid rejected the idea at first, then remembered that he was taking on Big Brother and Big Pharma at the same time, "Yeah, you're right. It'll be armageddon."

"I'm always right," Emily nodded in agreement, "But where does that leave us?"

"That leaves us right where we started," Reid replied. "Dr. Kenneth Lee is a snake. Dr. Charlotte Ames and Dr. Stanley Hawkins may or may not be slithering limbless reptiles, but we can investigate their office tomorrow morning to find out. We can examine their scientific interests, starting with what they're reading at the moment."

"I peeked into their office already," Emily said. "It's very messy. There are piles and piles of papers all over the desk and the floor. All the papers are scientific publications. You can read them tomorrow."

"I can, and I will," Reid declared. "Ames and Hawkins are clearly keeping up to date with the scientific literature. Here's hoping that they're reading about topics that'll point us towards the agent," he crossed his fingers.

"I'm so glad I'm not you," Emily said.

"What?" Reid asked, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"What?" Emily stared in wide-eyed innocence, "I'd rather clean toilets than read scientific literature any day. That stuff is horribly written. I tried to read the abstract of one of the articles. It was totally incomprehensible. I'm not even talking about the biological concepts. I'm talking about the sentence structure and the way the words were randomly strung together with interesting choices of punctuation. Half the time, I couldn't even identify the verb in the sentence."

"I'm afraid that's nature of scientific literature, Emily," Reid explained. "Scientists don't always want other scientists to understand their experiments. What if the other scientists decided to try out the experiments and discovered that the results were not reproducible? That would throw doubt upon the discovery, and the next time the NIH hands out the federal tax dollars..." he rubbed his thumb and index finger together in the universal sign of greed.

"I don't want to know any more of this political crap," Emily batted away the greed sign. "For our next shift, we'll get our official work done first. Then, I'll snoop around Lee's office some more, while you speed-read the literature in the other office. We'll meet at IHOP for breakfast and share what we've discovered overnight. Sound like a plan?"

"Sounds like a plan!" Reid agreed, "I can't wait to start. The purchase orders, the scientific literature...They might all point us in the right direction. It's like interpolation. I've always enjoyed interpolation more than extrapolation. It's like a new profiling technique. Maybe I could write a book about it after this is all over. I could be like Dave, traveling the country on book tours."

"Yeah, you can leave on your book tour as soon as you come up with the magical elixir to get my mother out of suspended animation," Emily teased. "Maybe Hotch will get you a tour bus. You could be a rockstar, and I could be one of your groupies. I bet all the 13-year-old girls will be throwing themselves at you. Them, and the 50-year-old housewives."

"Why must you always present such dystopian visions of the future?" Reid shrank into a corner so he could wiggle his arm into a position to open the door. "Why can't this closet be bigger?" he complained.

"Because it's designed to store mops and buckets rather than overgrown humans?" Emily smirked.

"Go tell that to Hank," Reid pushed past Emily on his way out the door, "I'll assemble the trauma team to revive you afterwards."

"Can you believe that he cracked his knuckles at me?" Emily said, "It's not just you that he hates. He seems to hate everyone who gets anywhere near the charts. He's like a mother bear, and the charts are like his cubs."

"What a disturbing image," Reid commented, "Thanks, Emily. I'll be on my way back to lab now. I've still gotta put in some orders before I leave for IHOP."

"Will it be your head on a stick if Dr. Big Shot Researcher Guy fails to receive his reagents in a timely manner?" Emily asked.

"Naturally," Reid replied. "But try not to be such a chauvinist, Emily. It could also be Dr. Big Shot Researcher Gal who wants my head on a stick."

"Mmmmmmm, Reid brains for dinner," Emily giggled.

"Tell me, Emily," Reid asked curiously, "Is it really that much fun to make fun of me, or is it just the spice of life in the BAU?"

"Both," Emily replied. "See you at IHOP, Eyesore. Quarter to six?"

"Quarter to six," Reid waved and disappeared around the corner.

Emily waved back and sighed loudly, puffing out her cheeks and closing her eyes, as she leaned back against a shelf of paper towels and disinfectant bottles. She was dead tired, what with her day job, her night job, and her visits to the hospital. She supposed that she was lucky. With her day job, she was in the unique position of being able to acquire a night job and a faux persona to go along with it.

Elizabeth Prentiss was lucky as well. Other victims, such as Isabella Torres, did not have champions to help their cause when they were unable to help themselves. Elizabeth Prentiss had a daughter who could take swift decisive action in the face of a crisis. The daughter was clever and diligent in her quest to help her mother, but none of her actions assuaged her guilt. Through the years, Emily had allowed Elizabeth to assume all the responsibility for their shared genetic destiny, well or ill. Emily knew that she should have done more research, acquired more knowledge, asked more questions. Instead, she had chosen to ignore the problem. It was a bad habit of hers. Whenever Emily had an unthinkable thought, she would banish it, packing it into a box that joined a cohort of boxes in a growing strand. When the strand grew too long for the dimensions of the brain, it would break down the middle, and its ends would recruit additional boxes as its owner produced them. With four ends rather than two ends to recruit boxes, the strands would multiply faster, some of the longer ones repeating the cycle - breaking down the middle, two ends becoming four ends, recruiting an ever increasing number of boxes. Eventually, the strands would run out of room, and they would gather together to be packed into sheets. With their potency, the sheets would eat away at the brain until the brain was a sloppy spongy mass of holes. Someday, when Emily finally chose to open the boxes, she would discover that all the initially varied morsels of thought had been re-shaped into the same unfamiliar form, and even if they had not, her brain would have been so damaged by the potency of the sheets that she would not even recognize the contents in their original forms. In this way, her memory would fail, and she would never remember, as she did not now remember, some irrational throwaway comment that she had made, regarding someone else, someone that she did not recognize, producing a magical elixir to help another someone else, someone that she also did not recognize. All that remained would be the emotions that had survived the destruction of the intellect, but she would continue her habit of packing them into boxes, strands, and sheets. In time, even the emotions would vanish, and there would be nothing left to make Emily Emily.

* * *

Reid noticed a squeezing pain in his arm before he noticed the change in lighting in the dim janitor's closet. Fluorescent light flooded in from the bright hospital corridor outside, and Reid felt himself being locked in an iron grasp and wrenched bodily out of the closet, where he had been diligently memorizing the medical charts of Elizabeth Prentiss and Isabella Torres.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Hank yelled in scarlet-faced rage at the cowering figure with the slack-jawed face. "I thought I made it clear that the medical charts were off limits! Are you a relative of the patients? Are you a relative of both Elizabeth Prentiss and Isabella Torres?"

"No?" Reid whimpered in the form of a question. "Uh, let me explain, Hank. I'm a family friend of Elizabeth Prentiss, and I'm a...uh...neurologist at Georgetown...at the School of Medicine..." he gave up when he realized that Hank could see through his pathetic lies. "Uh...I'll just leave then," he dumped the huge binders into Hank's hairy arms.

"I'd better not see you around here again!" Hank yelled at the figure departing in ignominious shame. "I don't know what kind of perverted sicko you are, but if I see you around here again, I'm going to snap you in half! I'm going to have your head on a stick!"

Reid directed his gaze downwards and pretended that the threats were directed at someone other than him as he scurried down the corridor into the stairwell. He wondered why Hank had shown up for work today. He supposed that Hank had switched shifts with one of the other nurses at the hospital. Apparently, the nurses' shift schedule was not a reliable method for avoiding Hank.

In the stairwell, Reid sat on the top step of the descending flight and texted Emily to meet him as soon as she was done with the doctors. He tapped his foot on a concrete step. He leaned his lead against a metal railing. It was quiet here, and the air was odorless, unlike the air of the hospital, which reeked of chemicals - disinfectants and medications and bodily fluids. Everything in the hospital, regardless of its simplicity or complexity, was reducible to chemicals, easy to understand when they were sealed up in reagent bottles, nearly impossible to understand when they were mixed up with millions of their cohorts in the bodies of living breathing humans.

The humans were part of the problem. If the chemicals were trapped inside other organisms, then the other organisms could be beheaded and their chemicals extracted for laboratory analysis. Chemicals in the human body were harder to access, especially the chemicals that made humans human, the ones that sequestered themselves within a round mineralized casing under a dome of hair, or no hair, whatever the case may be. The only method to get the chemicals was to saw through the skull and scoop out a sample of squishy gray goo. The only other method to get the chemicals, though far less satisfactory than the first, was to suck out a syringeful of cerebrospinal fluid from between the lumbar vertebrae of the spinal column, between L3 and L4 or L4 and L5.

"If only I had a CSF sample or two," Thumper fantasized, wrapping a pair of lab goggles, with elastic strap, around his furry head, "Then I could run a gel or a MALDI-TOF or a GC/MS to look for unusual components in the fluid bathing the brain. My life would be so much easier if I could get a CSF sample or two."

"Why don't you steal one?" Flower sidled up to Thumper with a conniving expression on his face.

"How would I steal a CSF sample?" Thumper nibbled at a blade of grass, ignoring the rules against eating in the lab. "I've been effectively banned from the fourth floor. Hank will snap me in half if I show my face there again."

"Bambi could steal one for you," Flower suggested, baring his teeth in an eager smile.

"You mean the next time someone comes to do a spinal tap on Bambi's mother, Bambi could steal the sample from under his nose?" Thumper considered, chewing with his mouth open. "But how would Bambi get a chance to do that? Someone would have to create a distraction, and as I said, I'm persona non grata on the fourth floor."

"I could create a distraction," Flower offered, sniffing at the air according to his skunkish instinct.

"What kind of distraction?" Thumper swallowed his last mouthful of sweet tender grass, his eyes and ears brightening at the selfless offer.

"You'll see!" Flower bounced towards a rabbit hole, "You'll see!" Flower wiggled down the dark opening.

"Flower!" Thumper hopped after the striped tail, "I wanna know about the distraction!"

"Don't like the taste of your own medicine, huh?" Flower poked his pointy snout out of the rabbit hole. "Thumper can't take his own medicine! Thumper can't take his own medicine!" Flower darted back into the hole and let fly a foul-smelling skunkish spray.

"Ewwwwwww!" Thumper rolled head over feet down a small fern-covered hill. "Flower, you've ruined my favorite hole!"

"Oh no, I've ruined Thumper's favorite hole!" Flower mocked the unhappy lagomorph. "Thumper can't take his own medicine! So, Thumper, you want my help or not?"

"Yes, Flower, I want your help," Thumper replied, donning an expression of false humility before his dastardly friend. "But just remember, Flower, Bambi is the one that you're really helping. That distraction had better be good...That distraction had better work. You just wait, Flower, I'm going to get you back..." Thumper waddled away on his hind legs, rubbing his front paws against each other and leaving a trail of bright white fur on the forest floor.

"Hi Thumper!" Bambi poked his head up from between the branches of a tree.

"Emily!" Reid jolted awake, searching for his partner-in-crime in the empty stairwell, "Emily!" he stood up too quickly, almost tumbling down the stairs as his vision blacked out momentarily.

Seeing no sign of Emily, Reid opened the door to the fourth floor corridor, poked his head through, and glanced down the hallway towards Elizabeth's hospital room. He slinked back into the stairwell before Hank, who was lumbering down the hallway with a bedpan, could spot him and dump the contents over his head. He sat back down and considered the alternatives to stealing a CSF sample from under the nose of a medical practitioner. He considered the ideal protocol for such a operation. By the time Emily arrived in the stairwell, Reid had replayed his conversation with Morgan hundreds of times. He knew that he was not really conversing with Morgan, but with a figment of Morgan that existed in his own mind, spoke in his own voice, and expressed his own thoughts, all without him having to pack the thoughts into boxes or having to aggregate the boxes into strands and sheets. The cartoonish voices of Thumper and Flower sounded even more squeaky and ridiculous when they were sped up and dwelled upon in the light of consciousness.

"Reid, wake up!" Emily shook the hunched figure, who had dozed off again, dreaming of himself sitting in a stairwell, avoiding Hank, considering alternatives to stealing a CSF sample from under the nose of a medical practitioner.

"Huh? What? Oh, hey Emily, how's your mother?" Reid yawned and stretched his legs down the stairs.

"She's stable," Emily replied, "One of the doctors thinks that he's identified the seizures."

"Really? What kind of seizures are they?"

"Myoclonic jerks," Emily said, "Which are just involuntary muscle twitches, like hiccups, which are twitches of the diaphragm. The doctor thinks that my mother's heaves and twitches indicate a severe myoclonic episode, the most severe that he's ever seen. He said that myoclonic jerks are associated with a wide variety of neurological disorders, including Alzheimer's Disease."

"Myoclonic jerks...Myoclonic jerks..." Reid repeated to himself, searching his memory banks for information about the condition. Finding that he knew nothing about the condition beyond its role in causing hiccups, he furrowed his brow and deferred to his partner-in-crime, "Does this help the doctors make a diagnosis?"

"Not really," Emily sighed, "The condition is non-specific. The doctors told me not to expect a diagnosis any time soon."

"That's why we need to investigate this ourselves," Reid picked up the obvious segue. "I've got a plan for figuring out what's wrong with your mother. I'm going to need your help and Morgan's help as well."

"Morgan's help?" Emily raised her eyebrows. "Don't tell me that you want him sneaking around the FDA too!"

"We're not sneaking around the FDA, Emily," Reid corrected his colleague. "We're working there openly...Anyway, this has nothing to do with the FDA. I don't want to see Morgan at my day job everyday, then at my night job every night," he shuddered slightly, "Imagine Morgan in lab goggles," Emily shuddered with him. "Anyway, my plan is going to take place here at the hospital, not at the FDA. Let me explain..."

Emily followed Reid down the stairs as he explained the entire ill-advised operation, including the part where Flower would create a distraction while Bambi pocketed a CSF sample and passed it to Thumper, waiting with an ice bucket in the stairwell. Thumper, Bambi, and Flower were tremendously lucky today. Not only was the medical resident planning to collect a CSF sample when he arrived at 6:00 PM, but Hank's shift was also ending at 6:00 PM, allowing the three furry friends to carry out the covert operation without the worry of being snapped in half. Emily shook her head as she imagined the wild scheme playing out before her eyes. She couldn't believe what she was implicitly agreeing to do. The scheme, though hare-brained, did its part to soothe her guilty conscience. Finally, she could assume some responsibility for her mother's condition. She didn't have to leave everything up to the doctors. She could do something about it herself. She could be a good daughter, one of those rebellious teenage girls who painted their faces white and their facial features black, but who grew up to wash off their conforming non-conformity and conformed instead to an oppressive world order in which they were best friends with their own mothers. She neglected to remember that she was already assuming responsiblity with her covert operation at the FDA. She also neglected to remember that she was heaping responsibility upon someone else, who, although he did not know anything about myoclonic jerks and although his brain was not a perfect fount of all knowledge, still gave her hope with his irrepessible enthusiasm for the problem at hand.

Unfortunately, hope was not what Emily needed. What Emily needed was luck.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Derek Morgan popped Mike and Ike candies into his mouth at an alarming pace. Juicy flavorings in all the colors of the rainbow mixed with saliva to produce a ticking time bomb of epiglottal failure.

Emily Prentiss stood by the bed, stone-faced, awaiting the falsified coughing fit that would allow her to steal the sample of cerebrospinal fluid that the medical resident was currently withdrawing from her mother's spinal column. She had entertained qualms about the operation, very briefly and very weakly, until the director had explained that CSF tests performed in the pathology lab of a hospital were essentially useless for diagnosing anything other than meningitis and that such tests were indeed a waste of precious CSF. It was far better to perform analytical chemistry experiments in a research lab. Then, the horrifying lumbar puncture procedure would not have been for naught.

The medical resident turned to stare at the man behind her, eating candy on the couch as if he were attending a sporting event. He was a family friend, not a relative, so she would normally have requested that he wait outside during the procedure, but there was something about him that clammed her mouth shut, tightened her throat, and sped up her heartrate. She admitted that she was shallow.

Morgan sucked in a breath of air, involuntarily, as the needle punctured the skin and pushed its way farther into the spinal column than any needle had any right to go. A trio of rod-shaped candies, glued together by their saccharine stickiness, caught at the back of his throat, partially blocking his airway. He tried to swallow the obstruction, not wanting to create a disturbance until the resident had finished collecting a sufficient amount of cerebrospinal fluid. He struggled, grimacing and tearing up, desperately wanting to hack up the colorful bolus, but unwilling to spoil the operation just to satisfy a physical urge to breathe.

The resident capped the tube, placed it into a test tube rack, and withdrew the needle. She helped the patient into a comfortable position on the bed. When she turned around to discard her gloves, she was greeted with a new opportunity to apply her medical expertise.

Morgan coughed and coughed, choking on the candy trapped in his throat, turning scarlet under his dark skin. The resident, a new graduate who was up-to-date with the latest American Heart Association recommendations, did not proceed directly to the Heimlich Maneuver. Instead, she slapped the victim on the back, using the vibrations of the blows to force the obstruction out of the victim's throat. Before the victim could turn blue, the obstruction tumbled, along with a stream of multi-colored saliva, out of the victim's mouth. The resident experienced a smidgeon of regret that she had not gotten a chance to wrap her arms around the Adonis-like victim and perform a series of forceful abdominal thrusts. Though prone to moments of shallowness, she was a good doctor who stuck to her code of ethics, "First, do no harm."

Emily wondered where Morgan had picked up such fine acting skills as she pocketed the CSF sample and replaced the tube with an identical tube of liquid. The substitute was indistinguishable from the featureless colorless cerebrospinal fluid. Emily went a step further, stumbling in concern towards her distressed friend and knocking over the test tube rack in the process. The tube fell to the floor, where the loosely capped contents leaked out, obviating the need for the pathology lab technicians to analyze a sample of tap water.

"Oh shoot, I'm so sorry!" Emily stared at the spill, "Derek, are you OK?" she tripped her way onto the couch.

"Yeah, fine," Morgan coughed some more, the coughs now of a vestigial rather than struggle-for-survival nature.

"It's OK, ma'am," the resident glanced at the mess on the floor. "I can do the procedure again. I'll go get another kit. Are you alright, sir?" she asked Morgan.

"Yeah, fine, thank you," Morgan wiped at his face with a tissue, giving the resident clearance to exit the room.

"Damn, Morgan, that was some fine acting!" Emily patted Morgan on the back. "For a minute there, I thought you were really choking on something."

"Yeah, acting," Morgan blew his nose, expelling more of the multi-colored saliva through his nostrils. "Go give that to Reid," he pointed at her jacket, where the CSF sample sat in an inner pocket. "I'm going to get the hell out of here before the doctor gets back," he peeked furtively through the blinds at the corridor outside.

"Alright, thanks, Morgan, you were a huge help. See you at work tomorrow," Emily pointed out the elevator, saw Morgan out, and started on her own way in the opposite direction, towards the stairwell.

"Emily!" a familiar voice attached to a familiar hand lured her into the janitor's closet. "Did you get the sample?" Reid held out an ice bucket.

"Got it!" Emily sunk the tube into the ice. "What are you doing in here? I thought we were supposed to meet in the stairwell."

"I had another go at the medical charts," Reid handed over two huge binders. "I saw Hank leave and drive away in his car, so I figured that it was safe to visit the fourth floor again. I've memorized the charts now. I also visited the pathology lab. There was no one there, because everyone was attending a retirement party for the head of the department," he held up a poster advertising such a party. "That's where I got this," he pointed out the other tube in the ice bucket. "This is a reference sample of human CSF. I'm going to use it as the control in my experiments. Of course, it's not an ideal control. Ideally, I'd have multiple CSF samples from your mother - from when she was non-medicated, from when she was medicated but non-symptomatic, from when she was awake and symptomatic, and from..." he hesitated for sensitivity, "...now," he finished. "Since I don't have those, I'll have to make do with these," he capped the ice bucket and wrapped his arms lovingly around the styrofoam box.

"Are you going to do the experiments tonight?" Emily asked.

"I'll do a GC/MS tonight," Reid said. "I'll start by measuring levels of neurotransmitters. We can start with small molecule components before we work our way up to protein components. Did you get a chance to talk to Isabella Torres's mother?"

"Not yet," Emily replied, "I haven't seen her since the weekend. She's got a day job, so she only comes around at night. The nurse wouldn't give me her phone number, so I left my card for her to call me. Hopefully, I'll hear from her soon, but even then, I still don't know what to tell her without leaking the whole story. Maybe I can count on the fact that she only speaks Spanish for her not to tell anyone?" Emily shrugged helplessly. "I'll have to ask Hotch for the go-ahead."

"Just try to get a sample of the pills," Reid said, "That's all we need from her," he ignored the rest of Emily's concerns.

The rest of Emily's concerns had to do with the real world, and Reid no longer lived there. As soon as he had entered the laboratory at the FDA, he had felt himself spun out of the real world and set down in a Never Never Land of reagents, instruments, and experiments. There was truth, dissolved within a sample of CSF, precipitated within a sample of pills, and it was his job to tease it out. It was not so much a job as a physical urge that had to be satisfied. Reid needed to know things. After he knew things, he could control things. He could impose his will upon the subject. In this other world that was truer than the real world, these were the only things that Reid thought about and cared about.

"Gotta go, Emily," Reid said, "Gotta go freeze these samples away before the proteins start degrading. I'll see you at work in a little bit."

"OK," Emily shifted her position to let him out of the closet. "Don't worry about cleaning the men's restroom tonight. I'll take care of it. You've got more important work to do."

"Ha!" Reid chuckled, "I knew I was getting something good out of this illegal operation. How about you come over to clean my lab around 1:00 AM? I should be doing the GC/MS by then."

"I'll show up as long as you don't explain the mechanism of operation of a GC/MS, whatever that is," Emily put forth a set of conditions. "When it comes to you, even I have my limits."

"I'm disappointed, Emily," Reid assumed a hurt expression. "You're the last one willing to listen to me. Well, Garcia listens too, but she's always staring at her computer screens, so I can never tell if she's paying any attention."

"I'll throw you a bone, Reid," Emily took pity upon the misunderstood creature, "What the hell does GC/MS stand for?"

"Gas chromatography mass spectrometry," Reid grinned more widely than anyone had a right to grin at such words. "And MALDI-TOF stands for matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry. It's used to identify proteins..."

"Did I inquire about MALDI-TOF?" Emily cut him off. "For that little slip-up, sir, you owe me a magical elixir to cure my mother."

"Blah blah blah," Reid pretended not to hear, "In one ear and out the other," he draped the hood of his jacket over his hair, creating an effect far more suspicious than leaving his appearance unaltered. "I owe her, she says. She doesn't want to know, she pretends," he grumbled in parting.

As Emily watched, Reid scurried down the corridor and disappeared into the stairwell. Emily suppressed a building unease, crushing it under a pile of heavy boxes. As a profiler, she had noticed Reid's demeanor change over the past few days. He seemed distracted all the time, absorbed in his own plans, eager to explain his own reasoning but closed off from the words of others. Most of the time, she was the only one he seemed to hear, her in person and Garcia on the phone. He paid no attention to anyone else, not even to Hotch when Hotch had laid down the ground rules for the covert operation in the FDA. It was as if he had abandoned the real world in favor of his own world. Emily was uncomfortable, because she was not privy to his world, not knowing any of the acronyms and abbreviations, not understanding any of the mechanisms, not feeling any of the pain and joy. She did not realize the effects of her words, the casual mentions of the "magical elixir" that to her was an unattainable dream, but to him was an attainable goal. She did not know that her words stimulated the dopamine reward system, responsible for the feel-good satiety that came with food and drug alike. The mind of an addict, in whom the dopamine reward system was irrevocably damaged, could not sustain the pressure of her words. It was driven to seek reward, regardless of risk.

* * *

Reid stared at the computer screen with his mouth hanging open. A surge of acetylcholine possibly crossed a neuromuscular junction in his diaphragm, possibly produced a small hiccup, and definitely matched the acetylcholine peak on the GC/MS run of the CSF sample. Whatever agent was causing the seizures, it was doing so by stimulating the production of acetylcholine, the neurotransmitter that modulated muscle contractions in the peripheral nervous system. It was simulating the effects of nerve gases, such as sarin and VX, which inhibited acetylcholinesterase, the enzyme that broke down acetylcholine and ensured that muscles would not contract forever and ever and ever.

"Find anything?" Emily whispered at Reid's side, startling the lab tech into falling out of his chair.

"Emily! You scared me!" Reid clapped his hand over his heart. "I thought someone had caught me performing unauthorized experiments."

"Would anyone besides your boss really know which experiments you're authorized to perform?" Emily asked.

"I guess not," Reid admitted, "But I'd still have to explain what I'm doing if someone asked. I'd still have to explain why I'm running a GC/MS of cerebrospinal fluid showing an excessive level of acetylcholine."

"So that's what you found? An excessive level of acetylcholine?" Emily asked excitedly. "Actually, I have no idea what that means," she realized in sudden disappointment.

"An extremely excessive level of acetylcholine, which would explain the severe seizures," Reid said.

"The myoclonic jerks?"

"Yes, if the seizures are myoclonic jerks," Reid replied.

"Do you think they're not?" Emily asked.

"I have no idea," Reid answered, "The mechanisms that cause myoclonic jerks are not well-understood. I looked them up after you told me what the doctor said. A number of neurotransmitter receptors have been implicated in myoclonic jerks, but it's not even clear whether the twitches are caused by excitatory or inhibitory pathways. It's entirely possible that they're caused by a spike in acetylcholine. It's also entirely possible that the seizures are the kind of severe muscle spasms associated with nerve agents. Either way, the doctors are right to keep your mother sedated."

"Nerve agents?" Emily focused in on the worst case scenario, "Chemical weapons?"

"No, no, no," Reid shook his head, "Nerve agents produce many other symptoms, none of which your mother has displayed. I don't think we're dealing with nerve agents. I would bet my brain that we're not dealing with nerve agents."

"That sounds highly scientific," Emily remarked, "You really should include that as evidence for your next Great Scientific Theory. Maybe it'll be as convincing as 'Evil Twin, Eviler Twin'."

"Don't you dare knock 'Evil Twin, Eviler Twin'," Reid objected, "It might not have applied to that Angel Maker case, but it might still come in handy someday. In the meantime, I just remembered that I still have a bunch of journal articles to read," he recalled his plan to interpolate his way to the rogue agent by profiling the reading materials and purchase orders of Drs. Ames and Hawkins. "The only problem is I'm running these experiments, so I don't have time to read them this morning."

"I already read them for you," Emily said slyly.

"What? You read them? All of them?" Reid couldn't believe his ears.

"I did!" Emily waved a set of printouts in Reid's face. "Here's a list of topics from all the articles that Lee, Ames, and Hawkins have printed out or saved onto their computers."

"How exactly did you generate this list?" Reid asked in confusion.

"With the help of a little nocturnal bird named Penelope," Emily replied. "Unlike most birds, this one sees best at night. Listen up, Luddite, and hear the wonders of technology. I took a photo of every single journal article in Lee's office and the Ames/Hawkins office. Each photo was a close-up of the front page, focusing in on the title and abstract. I sent the photos to Garcia, and she ran them through a text recognition software to convert the pictures into words. She also hacked into everyone's FDA workstations to retrieve all the articles they saved. She took the text and ran it through a language analysis software, which pulled out the nouns from the titles and abstracts and ranked them according to frequency. It turns out that almost all the nouns in titles and abstracts are scientific terms. She made sure to pull out groups of words as well, so that "early-onset Alzheimer's Disease" would be treated as a single term rather than split up into "onset" and "Disease", thus losing the original meaning. In its default setting, the software also recognizes acronyms and abbreviations. It pulls out words containing consecutive capitalizations."

"So this is essentially a list of topics in all the articles that our three persons of interest have been reading recently?" Reid asked.

"Yeah, this is a list for all three," Emily handed Reid a packet, "These are lists for each reader," she handed over three packets, "And this is a list of articles on the floor of the Ames/Hawkins office," she indicated a final packet. "I figured that the articles on Ames's desk belonged to her and the articles of Hawkins's desk belonged to him, but I wasn't sure about the ones in the middle of the floor."

"You're amazing, Emily," Reid congratulated his colleague, then proceeded to shut out her presence as he absorbed the lists.

"Well, thank you, Genius, but I knew that already," Emily smiled, "Of course, I couldn't have done it without Garcia, but it was still my idea to begin with," she reached over her shoulder to pat herself on the back. "Reid, are you listening to me? Reid!" she shook the intently focused lab tech.

"Huh? What?" Reid looked over the top of the printouts.

"You know, Emily, this list saves us a ton of time, but we could go another step further," he continued without bothering to find out what she wanted. "Ask Garcia to identify nouns or groups of nouns that appear in the same sentence and in the same clause of a sentence. For instance, "amyloid plaques" and "Alzheimer's Disease" are very likely to appear in the same clause, given that amyloid plaques are observed in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's Disease. Have her make a list that goes like "AD - amyloid beta", "AD - tau", "familial AD - presenilin", and so on and so on. That'll give us a better idea of the contents of the articles without having to wade through the horrible writing."

"Leave it to Mr. Regular Guy to burst my bubble," Emily sighed, "I suddenly feel so much less genius."

"No, Emily, you should feel very genius," Reid argued, "You're the one who came up with this brilliant shortcut."

"Thanks, Reid," Emily patted him on the back. "I'll have Garcia get on that right away. What's next with your experiments?"

"I'm going to run a gel to separate out the various proteins in the CSF sample," Reid explained. "If there are any unusual bands in the gel, I can extract the bands and run a MALDI-TOF to identify the proteins in them. The whole process will take more than one day, so I should start preparing the samples right away if we're going to see the results tomorrow morning."

"OK, you can go ahead and prep your samples, and I can work on the language analysis with Garcia," Emily said. "By the way, Reid, how do you know so much about all this? It's like you've been working here forever."

"What do you mean?" Reid asked.

"Did you get a Ph.D. in biology in your spare time?" Emily asked.

"Oh no, it's not like that," Reid replied, "It's just that I have a Ph.D. in chemistry, and biology is just chemistry with bigger molecules. The experiments are easy. All you have to do is mix solutions together, keep cells and animals alive, and inject samples into expensive instruments like this one," he patted the nondescript gray box containing the GC/MS. "Oh yeah, and fiddle around with software that converts everything into numbers," he added as an afterthought.

"Oh goody, converting everything into numbers," Emily raised her eyebrows, as if she thought that this was not the best idea in the world. "I'll leave you to do that in your creepy little lab of horrors."

"Are you going to the hospital after your shift today?" Reid asked.

"No, I need to go home and get some sleep," Emily replied. "I'll go back to the hospital before my next shift."

"You look tired," Reid said.

"I am tired," Emily yawned widely, "But I'll survive. Aren't you tired too? I can never tell with you. You've always got those dark circles around your eyes."

"I'm not tired," Reid answered, "Not when I have this," he held up a thick hardcover book.

"You mean that book doesn't make you even sleepier?"

"No, because it's not really a book. Let me show you," Reid said.

He held the book in a vertical position under Emily's nose. She glanced down to see a hole cut into the top of the pages. He wiggled his index finger into the hole to fish out a bendy straw, which he stuck into his mouth and used to suck up a stream of black liquid. He opened the book to show her the bottle of coffee within the cut-out pages. She responded by burying her face in her hands.

"Are you doing that because you're jealous? Do you want one of these? I can make you one if you want," Reid offered. "This is the Dr. Spencer Reid patented method for sneaking food and drink into laboratories where food and drink are prohibited."

"Yes, Reid, I'm going to need one of these," Emily replied, "If only to prove that I'm one of the cool kids."

"Don't worry, Emily," Reid said, "You'll always be one of the cool kids in my book," he snorted at his lame joke.

"Yeah, thanks, what a boost to my self-esteem," Emily chortled her way out of the lab.

In the hallway outside, Emily paused before her mop-and-bucket combo. She had yet to clean the disgusting men's restroom. She would call Garcia to start the language analysis before she tackled that job. Even that job didn't seem so bad anymore, now that she had contributed something tangible to the case. She realized that she had been wrong about Reid at the hospital. He was not distracted at all. He was focused, and now, so was she. A sense of peace cut through her anxieties for the first time since the nightmare had started. She felt a little guilty, believing that she had no right to feel any peace, much less this strange peace tinged with equally strange happiness.

Emily did not understand the source of her feelings. She could only convince herself that they sprang from the discoveries that she and her partner had made, left and right, over their two shifts at the FDA. She did not understand that the true source was the effortless camaraderie that she shared with her partner-in-crime. The BAU shared a comfortable camaraderie, working as a team and a family, but this new camaraderie, the one that Emily shared with Reid, was completely different from that one. It was as if she, a lowly janitor, and he, a lowly lab tech, were both content to be lowly creatures of the third watch as long as they enjoyed each other's company. Emily - smart, ambitious, and self-possessed - had never felt this way before. She didn't know what this feeling was called, but she knew that she didn't want to let it go.

* * *

Back in the lab, Reid's thoughts had nothing to do with wishy-washy feelings that he refused to track down to their true sources. He was busy, preparing samples for his next experiment, berating himself for lying to his friend.

The comment that he had fed her and she had believed, the one about how biology was just chemistry with bigger molecules and that chemists would naturally know all about biology, was as ridiculous as it was false. That was not the reason he knew so much about biology. He knew so much about biology, because he himself was a failed biologist.

One summer, years and years ago, when he had been half a foot shorter, Non-Dr. Spencer Reid had worked in a biology lab. He had worked under a professor at Caltech, in the building that everyone called Anti-Baxter because it was located across a lawn from Baxter, in the building that was officially designated "Beckman Behavioral Biology". In that building, Spencer had studied schizophrenia. He had killed mice and extracted their brains for laboratory analysis. He had watched the grad students as they cut through the skulls of apes to extract brains more similar to human brains. He had logged more hours in that lab during that summer than any other summer, but he had come up with nothing to show for it. He had produced disparate experimental results that had confused everyone, himself most of all. None of the results had been publishable, much less useful. That was when he had realized the intractability of the problem and his own helplessness before it. The whole field was a garbage heap of contradictions, with some scientists questioning even the existence of schizophrenia as a medical condition.

Spencer had been foolish, thinking that he would have been able to dig out a clearing where others had failed. He had thought that with his intellect and imagination, he would have been able to make a dent in the problem. He had not considered the issue of luck, nor had he realized that he had none. He had been young and weak, so he had given in to lonely frustration. It was not as if he could tell anyone that he was tackling a personal problem. He refused to acknowledge that the problem could possibly become his personal destiny. The field was not clear in that regard either. There was no genetic test for schizophrenia, and it was doubtful that there would ever be one.

In the end, Spencer had simply washed his hands of the problem, the better to concentrate on cleaner problems, ones that, because they did not affect him personally, could actually be mentioned by name. His mind was sharp and clear and confident when it tackled other problems. It was muddy and foggy when it tackled the problem that shall not be named. In other areas, he really could dig out a clearing where others had failed. Other areas contained problems that could be understood. Best of all, the problems could even be solved.

In the back of his mind, through all the years of college and grad school, Spencer had always intended to return to the problem. He was not a quitter, merely a procrastinator. In the beginning, he had believed that he needed to run a race, to find a cure, or at least an effective therapy, before the disease overtook his mind. After a few weeks in the BBB lab, he had realized that the race had already been run and the results had already been determined. There was no need to run any other race. If he needed to win any other race, then he had already lost the first race, and if he had already won the first race, then he wouldn't need to win any other race. That was why he had been content to bide his time. He had thought that he would return to the problem when he was older and wiser, when the field was more mature, when the brain imaging technologies were more advanced. He had expected to return sometime in his mid-20s, after he had gotten a couple more Ph.D.s, one in physics and one in biology, to round out a triumvirate of natural sciences with chemistry at the center.

However, before he could carry out his plans, Spencer Reid had met Jason Gideon, and Jason Gideon had offered the gift of an alternate escape route. Under Gideon's guidance, Reid had convinced himself that as long as he contributed to the world in some other way, then he would not have to return to the problem. That was why he had been eager to escape the world of science. In the world of science, all roads led to the problem. In the real world, Reid was free for 59 minutes per hour. All he had to do was run the conviction sequence every hour on the hour. That was why, in Reid's mind, whenever he looked himself in the mirror and told himself the truth, he knew that he was a tremendous failure.

Reid straightened and flexed his fingers after he pipetted the last reagent into the last tube. He crossed to the opposite side of the lab to grab a flask, a gel box, and a power supply for electrophoresis. His mind was sharp and clear and confident. He was older and stronger now, so he would not give in to lonely frustration. He still could not tell anyone that he was tackling a problem, but it was not a personal problem, and it would never become his personal destiny. Besides, he now carried a new weapon into battle. The weapon came in the form of an irrevocably damaged dopamine reward system. It drove him, as he had needed to be driven all those years ago, to seek reward wherever he could find it. He thought that he had overcome the problem several years ago, but he was mistaken. He would never overcome the problem, not as long as he lived, because the problem had integrated itself into his cells. This time, it would be a weapon for him to use, and he himself would be safe, as long as he directed the weapon outwards at the world rather than inwards at the self.

Reid was older and wiser, but he was not yet old and wise. He, along with his partner-in-crime, still believed that the world and the self could actually be separated.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Emily Prentiss never had dreams in which she morphed herself and her friends into adorable cartoon animals. In her dreams, she always played herself.

The only thing that varied was the age of the self. If Emily could have remembered and cataloged every dream she ever had, then she could have created a graph depicting the frequency with which each age dominated her subconscious mind. She would have found age 12 at the peak of the graph.

At age 12, Emily had been a student at the International School in Geneva, Switzerland. She had mingled with the children of diplomats, who, like her mother, worked at the many international organizations headquartered within the city. One day, during geography class, the teacher had given a pop quiz, and Emily had been the first to finish. The teacher had sent her down the hall to a kindergarten classroom to retrieve a giant rotating globe that he had hoped to use as a visual aid in his lesson plan. Emily had gotten as far as the doorway of the kindergarten classroom before she had been attacked by a group of masked gunmen. They had locked her, along with a dozen kindergartners, into the classroom and held them hostage for three days. They had thrown out the teacher, leaving 12-year-old Emily as the only caretaker for the 5-year-old kindergartners.

During the hostage crisis, Emily had developed a coping mechanism that she had used to take care of the younger children. She had taken her own fears and anxieties and shoved them into little boxes that she had cordoned off behind yellow caution tape. That was why she had been brave enough to demand food, water, and bathroom breaks from the masked gunmen. Providing physical security was the only way that she had thought of to keep the children calm, to prevent them from crying and screaming, to prevent the gunmen from shooting them in a fit of annoyance or rage, if only to shut off the ruckus.

For the first time in her life, Emily had felt strong and powerful. Her feelings had been in blatant contradiction with the actual situation, in which she was weak and powerless beneath the barrel of a machine gun. Psychological compartmentalization had offered a mental escape route. She was strong and powerful at the same time that she was weak and powerless, all because she had lucked out and chanced upon an effective defense mechanism.

After the crisis had ended, when the gunmen had abandoned their anti-globalization agenda in favor of their prolonged survival, Emily had not given up her new set of skills. Instead, she had incorporated them into her developing psyche, and they had become the default setting of her mind. Whenever she was faced with a serious problem or a dangerous situation, Emily simply compartmentalized her feelings into boxes, which she stacked, one upon another, to make room for analytical processes that were so much more useful during difficult times. During difficult times, Emily imagined that she could actually feel herself getting smarter.

Afterwards, she never dealt with the emotional fallout. She never unpiled the stacks or unpacked the boxes. She simply left them there to rot, over years and decades, and the voices trapped inside them never got a chance to tell their stories, not even in dreams. They spoke neither truth or un-truth, and as a consequence, Emily understood neither weakness or strength.

* * *

"New lists," Emily thumped a roll of paper over Reid's head, waking him up from a Thumper-Bambi-Flower dream, in which the three furry friends TP'd the gingerbread house of the evil cannibalistic witch from "Hansel and Gretel".

"New lists from Garcia?" Reid unleashed a jaw-unhinging yawn, "Including language linkage analysis?" he took a sip of coffee from The Book.

"If 'language linkage analysis' is what you told me to do last night," Emily replied.

"Do you like my terminology?" Reid asked hopefully. "I took inspiration from genetic linkage analysis. Genetic linkage occurs when genes located close to each other on the same chromosome are inherited together. The biological phenomenon isn't exactly analogous to our situation, but I thought that 'language linkage analysis' had a nice ring to it."

"This is all going into your book, isn't it?" Emily asked.

"This is all going into my book, of which you shall be the co-author," Reid offered magnanimously.

"Oh joy, I can't wait to write a book with you," Emily imagined the scenario, discovered that it was an attractive one, and compartmentalized the whole set of thoughts and feelings. "We can talk about that in the future. Right now, we have to make sense of these lists. Garcia went all informatics happy with the data. Let me explain her system," she shuffled the papers and split them into piles. "The same set of data is displayed in two different formats. In one format, the correlated terms are ranked by frequency in a list. In the other format, the correlated terms are shown in a table, with one term in the lefthand column and all the terms correlated with it in the righthand column. As you predicted, we've got Alzheimer's Disease on the left, correlated with amyloid beta, tau, and presenilin on the right, plus hundreds of other terms ranked by frequency."

"Perfect," Reid consumed the lists and tables with his eyes.

"We also ranked the articles and terms by importance," Emily organized additional piles of paper on the lab bench.

"What do you mean by importance?" Reid asked, "What's the criteria for importance?"

"I made a couple of assumptions, which may or may not be valid, to judge the importance of an article," Emily explained. "For electronic articles, I assumed that the most frequently accessed ones were the most important. Garcia was able to pull out the number of times that each article had been opened since it was first downloaded. For paper articles, I assumed that the ones at the tops of the piles were the most important. We split the articles into thirtiles - the top, the middle, and the bottom - based on frequency of access and location in the pile. We assigned multiplicative factors to the thirtiles - 1 for the middle, 2 for the top, and 0.5 for the bottom. That makes the top article twice as important as the middle article and four times as important as the bottom article."

"So you know which articles are from the top and which articles are from the bottom?"

"Yeah, I followed a specific protocol when I took the photos, so I can track down the locations of all the articles. First, I photographed the whole pile in its original location. Then, I flipped the pile over so all the articles were facing downwards, and I photographed each individual article as I turned it over to re-create the pile. The camera gives each photo a timestamp, so the most recent photo from each pile is the top article in the pile. I split the piles into three categories - on the desk near the computer, on the desk away from the computer, and anywhere else in the room, such as the bookcase or the floor. Piles received multiplicative factors based on their proximity to the computer. The terms in the articles at the tops of the piles closest to the computer received the highest scores for importance. Garcia generated a list of terms ranked by importance. Hopefully, this list gives us insight into which topics are foremost in the minds of our UnSubs. What do you think, Reid?"

"Basically, you converted everything into numbers," Reid remarked.

"Basically, I'm turning into you," Emily remarked.

"I knew that you'd see the light one day," Reid rubbed his hands together with a satisfied smirk on his face. "Let's see what we've got," he scanned through the papers depicting Lee's reading habits. "For Dr. Kenneth Lee, the most frequent set of correlated terms is 'statin' with 'cholesterol synthesis', followed by 'statin' with 'HMG-CoA reductase'. That's the enzyme that catalyzes the rate-limiting step in the cholesterol synthesis pathway. Not exactly surprising, considering that Lee's the administrator in charge of the clinical trial."

"But I don't think he's spending a lot of time thinking about statins," Emily circled the top item on a different list. "Most of the statin-related articles were accessed once on his computer, and most of the paper articles were nowhere near his computer. I don't see much relation between the clinical trial and the articles near his computer. The top set of correlated terms was 'human behavior' with 'Great Leap Forward'. I don't recognize the second term. I'd have to shoot myself if I didn't recognize the first term. What do you know about the Great Leap Forward?"

"The Great Leap Forward was the final step in human evolution," Reid recited. "It distinguished modern man from our archaic Homo sapiens ancestors. Prior to the Great Leap Forward, archaic humans looked just like us, but they thought very differently. Their cognitive functions were limited to the physical world, without our ability to engage in abstractions. They used a small set of simple tools in their daily lives. They didn't create art or music, none of the things that we recognize as culture. They didn't even bury their dead. Somehow, anytime between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago, humans developed imagination. It was the last cognitive function to evolve. Complex tools and cultural artifacts suddenly appeared in the archaeological record. The prime example is the Lascaux cave paintings in France, but much older rock art has been discovered in Africa in recent years. More and more anthrolopologists believe that the Great Leap Forward took place in Africa as early as 100,000 years ago. They would say that the Great Leap Forward gave rise to behaviorally modern humans. It made us us."

"Anthropologists would say that?" Emily connected the dots, "Anthropologists like Dr. Sandra Maynard?"

"Anthropologists like Dr. Sandra Maynard," Reid nodded.

"What the hell is going on here?" Emily threw up her hands. "Lee's wife is the recipient of a $50,000 check from PhenoPharm. Lee's wife is an anthropology professor at the University of Maryland. Lee spends all his time reading, and presumably thinking, about his wife's area of expertise rather than his own job."

"Well, we only know that Lee's wife is an anthropologist," Reid said, "We don't know her precise area of expertise," he walked towards a computer to look her up.

"Garcia looked her up already," Emily dug up another piece of paper. "Here's a list of her scientific publications," she handed the paper to Reid.

"Maynard is an expert on human evolution," Reid scanned the list, "She's a physical anthropologist, like the Leakeys."

"The ones who dug up all those hominid fossils in Africa?" Emily asked.

"Yeah, the Laetoli Footprints, Turkana Boy...You name it, the Leakeys discovered it," Reid replied. "Do you think that Lee is just taking an interest in his wife's field of research?"

"Are you really playing dumb, or have the fumes actually gotten to your brain?" Emily rolled up her papers and thumped them over Reid's head.

"I'm playing the skeptic," Reid explained. "Skeptics can be very annoying, especially if they disagree with your theories. I'm not a very good skeptic though. I actually agree with your theories. There's something fishy going on here. Lee and Maynard both appear to be involved."

"I'll have Garcia email you the anthropology articles and some of Maynard's publications so you can read them yourself," Emily suggested. "Maybe the specific information in the articles will point us in the right direction. Meanwhile, let's move on to Ames and Hawkins."

"Good thinking, I'll read the articles during the MALDI-TOF runs," Reid agreed. "Alright, Dr. Charlotte Ames, biochemist at PhenoPharm, lead scientist on the clinical trial," he grabbed a pile of papers. "Most frequent topic of interest...Alzheimer's Disease correlated with everything under the sun. Most important topic...Alzheimer's Disease as well. The top set of correlated terms is 'Alzheimer's' with 'acetylcholine'. I wonder if she subscribes to the cholinergic hypothesis of Alzheimer's Disease."

"I'm going to assume that the cholinergic hypothesis has something to do with acetylcholine," Emily said. "Doesn't this match up perfectly with your GC/MS results?"

"Not exactly," Reid frowned, "We found an excessive level of acetylcholine in your mother's CSF sample. Alzheimer's is associated with reduced production of acetylcholine. Three of the four drugs approved for Alzheimer's are acetylcholinesterase inhibitors, which, like nerve agents, prevent the breakdown of acetylcholine. They're only useful for treating mild cognitive impairments observed in the early stages of Alzheimer's Disease. None of them are effective for treating the dementia that accompanies advanced Alzheimer's, nor do they slow or stop the progression of the disease."

"That's comforting," Emily sighed. "The only thing I'm getting from Ames is that she's really invested in the Alzheimer's branch of the study. She doesn't seem to care about the cholesterol branch. I don't know how to interpret her behavior."

"I'm getting the same message from Ames," Reid concurred. "I'm not surprised that she's more interested in Alzheimer's than cholesterol. Statins and cholesterol are old news. Statins and Alzheimer's are far more exciting. So far, I'm not getting a suspicious vibe from Dr. Charlotte Ames."

"You're capable of getting vibes?" Emily widened her eyes in amazement. "Now I've seen everything!"

Reid rolled up his papers and thumped them over Emily's head. Emily stuck her tongue out at Reid, who blew up a latex glove, like a balloon, and released the air into her face.

"Hey, hey, hey! Watch it!" Emily grabbed the glove and blew it up herself. "Call it a truce and move on to Hawkins?"

"Call it a truce and move on to Hawkins," Reid drank from The Book.

"Dr. Stanley Hawkins," Emily sorted her papers. "Neurologist at Georgetown, on sabbatical for six months to oversee the clinical trial, highly respected in his field, has never been sued for medical malpractice. Interests include Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's Disease, Huntington's Disease. What would you call that, Reid? A neurodegenerative triad?"

"Pretty much," Reid replied. "Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's - the three most well-known neurodegenerative diseases. Everyone's heard of them. No one wants to get them. Oh wait, we forgot one...Make it a neurodegenerative quartet...We forgot ALS."

"There's a bunch of other diseases on this list," Emily looked down the frequency list. "I haven't heard of any of them though. Where's the other list for Hawkins? The one ranked by importance?" she looked all over the lab bench without finding the list.

"I don't know," Reid said, crumpling up the list and stuffing it into a pocket of his lab coat. "We can look for it later. Right now, I've got to seed some cells for tomorrow's experiments."

"Oh, so you have more official work to do tonight?" Emily asked, "You won't have time to run the MALDI-TOF?"

"No, unfortunately not," Reid replied, "I won't be able to run the MALDI-TOF until tomorrow. Sorry, Emily."

"Sorry for what? You've done so much already," Emily stood up to leave the lab. "Anything I can help you with here?"

"Nah," Reid replied, "I'm going to do my menial job now. It'll be boring, but it'll give me time to mull over the LLA data."

"Oh God, you're abbreviating your made-up terminology," Emily shook her head. "You're hopeless, Reid. Absolutely hopeless. What am I going to do with you?"

"Of course I'm abbreviating," Reid defended himself. "Language linkage analysis is quite a mouthful. LLA is so much easier to say."

"Whatever you say, Genius," Emily backed into the door. "I'll leave you with your acronyms and abbreviations and terminology. I've still got my own menial job to do," she shuddered her way out the door.

"Bye, Emily," Reid waved.

He plopped into a chair, waited for five minutes to make sure that Emily wouldn't come back, and called Garcia at 2:30 AM.

"Office of Earth-Shattering Exemplitude!" Garcia answered brightly, "What can I do ya for?"

"You're still up at this hour?" Reid asked.

"Yes, dear," Garcia replied sweetly, "I've adjusted my sleep schedule to match your nocturnal pursuits. I'm like a NASA scientist during a Mars rover mission, timing my life to the Martian day and slowly falling out of sync with the terrestrials."

"That's a good idea, Garcia," Reid said, "This way, I won't have to feel bad about waking you up in the middle of the night."

"Indeed not," Garcia said, "I'm all ears."

"You know the language analysis you've been running for Emily?" Reid went ahead with his request. "Can you run it again right now and email me the results right away? This time, rank the articles by date of download. I want to build a historical record of reading habits. I'm especially interested in the past month."

"Got it! I shall email you and your partner forthwith!"

"Um...Can you email me and not Emily?" Reid whispered cautiously.

"Why would I do that?" Garcia asked, "Doesn't Emily want to see the list?"

"Uh...I don't think so," Reid stammered. "Emily and I..." he prepared a lie, "We had a little argument about the language analysis," he lied. "It was all my fault. I started babbling about the proper way to do a language linkage analysis, and I made light of some of her work during the past couple of days. She was right to be angry, but it's all over now. She's not mad at me anymore. Still, I'd prefer it if you didn't email her the list."

"No problem, Disgraced One!" Garcia said. "The Office of Earth-Shattering Exemplitude promotes harmony in all human interactions. It shouldn't take more than ten minutes for me to email you the list."

"Thanks, Garcia," Reid cringed at his lies. "I've got a new name for your office, if you wanna hear it."

"You know I do!"

"What about the Office of Extraterrestrial Sagacity?" Reid offered timidly.

"Oooooooh, I like, I like," Garcia clapped in approval. "It makes me sound like a wise old alien watching over the humans from my undetectable orbiting mothership. The humans have no idea that I was the one who originally seeded their planet with proto-intelligent life. Nor do they realize that I've been controlling every step in their evolution ever since."

"I'm glad you like the name," Reid said. "I'll be even gladder when I get the list in my inbox."

"On it, Taskmaster! Office of Extraterrestrial Sagacity, out!" Garcia hung up.

Reid put his head down on the lab bench, his heart pounding from all the lies that he had told in the past ten minutes. He apologized silently to Garcia for lying to her about the non-existent argument with Emily. He apologized silently to Emily for lying to her about the non-existent cells that had to be seeded. He grabbed the crumpled piece of paper out of his lab coat and tossed it into the garbage. He didn't need to read it, because he had already memorized it.

The piece of paper showed a list of topics at the forefront of Dr. Stanley Hawkins's mind. Topping the list was a set of abbreviations - CJD, FFI, TSE. They were all diseases. They were all essentially the same disease, caused by the same agent, progressing through the same steps, ending with the same result. They shared the same mortality rate. It was 100%, without exception.

Reid remained with his head on the lab bench until Garcia texted him to check his email. He clicked on the attachment, his fingers barely coordinated enough to hold the mouse. He found what he had expected to find.

In the past month, Drs. Lee, Ames, and Hawkins had read, in total, 27 articles on the topic of myoclonic jerks. They had read no articles on the topic prior to Monday, when they had arrived at work to discover that two of the patients in their clinical trial had fallen victim to seizures that were tentatively identified as myoclonic jerks. On Monday, Dr. Lee had read 2 articles on myoclonic jerks. That was where he had stopped. On Monday, Dr. Ames had read 5 articles on myoclonic jerks, all of them broad overviews of the topic that summarized the uncertain state of the field. That was where she had stopped. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Dr. Hawkins had read 20 articles on myoclonic jerks, none of them overviews, all of them research articles, in which everything that could be understood was expressed in charts, graphs, and tables. In LLA, when the scientific terminology was ranked by download date, the top set of correlated terms for Dr. Hawkins was "myoclonic jerks" with "CJD".

As Reid knew, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, Fatal Familial Insomnia, and Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy were all essentially the same disease. They were all caused by the same agent. In the scientific literature, the agent was not represented by an acronym or an abbreviation. It was represented by a portmanteau, defined as "a word formed by blending sounds from two or more distinct words and combining their meanings". For the agent, the two or more distinct words, whose sounds were blended and whose meanings were combined, were "**pr**otein **i**nfecti**on**".


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

The word "prion" was a portmanteau of the words "**pr**otein **i**nfecti**on**".

A prion was an infectious protein. It caused disease.

Most proteins were not infectious. Most proteins were good citizens of the cell. They were large molecules, produced by the cell to perform all its functions. They were encoded by DNA, also large molecules, in units called genes. Genes were genotype - instructions. Proteins were phenotype - constructions.

The central dogma of molecular biology stated that information flowed from DNA to protein. DNA sequence determined protein sequence. Protein sequence determined protein structure. Protein structure determined protein function. Genotype to phenotype, instructions to constructions.

As with all dogmas, there were exceptions.

In the case of prions, information flowed from protein to protein. Protein structure determined protein structure.

In a batch of protein molecules, all of the same type, a single molecule folded incorrectly into a misshapen structure. All the other molecules folded correctly into the normal structure, the one that allowed the protein to perform its function. The misshapen structure conferred a new function to the rogue molecule. The rogue molecule gained the ability to bind and re-shape normal molecules into copies of itself. Over time, the rogue molecule replicated, propagating the misshapen structure to all the normal molecules. Each time a normal molecule was converted into a rogue molecule, it went on to convert other normal molecules. Eventually, all the molecules lost their original structure and their original function. The protein, originally a good citizen of the cell, joined the pantheon of pathogens - bacteria, viruses, prions.

In the brain, prions aggregated into strands and sheets. Every now and then, the fibrils that formed the strands and sheets broke down the middle. Two ends became four ends, the better to recruit normal molecules, binding and re-shaping them into rogue molecules. The strands and sheets grew at an exponential rate, gathering into indestructable deposits, called amyloid plaques, that accumulated in the brain. Cells died. Tissues withered. Gray matter became gray goo. The brain became a sloppy spongy mass of holes.

The disease was called spongiform encephalopathy. In humans, spongiform encephalopathy was tastefully designated as a family of related diseases - Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, Fatal Familial Insomnia, Gerstmann-Straeussler-Scheinker Syndrome. In bovines, spongiform encephalopathy was unceremoniously designated as mad cow disease.

Reid stared at the MALDI-TOF results on the computer screen. He stared at the other computer screen, displaying the matches between the unknown protein in the CSF sample and all the proteins in the UniProt database. There was only one match, to a protein called prion protein, PrP for short.

In mammals, PrP came in two forms. PrPC was the normal form that performed an unknown function in the cell. PrPSc was the rogue form that caused the fatal neurodegenerative disease that one acquired from eating tainted beef. One did not actually have to eat tainted beef to acquire the disease. A protein molecule might fold incorrectly in a completely spontaneous manner. The misshapen structure might propagate from one molecule to many molecules. Whether one acquired the disease depended on the luck of the draw. The disturbing part was that cards were constantly being drawn, in every single cell of the body, at every single second of the day.

"Whatcha doin'?" Emily snuck up behind Reid.

"God, Emily! You scared me half to death again!" Reid tumbled off his chair.

"You lied to me," Emily wagged her finger at Reid.

"What? When?" Reid felt his face flush, his ruddiness signaling contraction of the brain, which immediately raced to synthesize all his lies into a self-consistent alternate version of reality that he prepared to unfurl as needed.

"You said that you'd be seeding cells all night and that you wouldn't have time to run the MALDI-TOF," Emily replied. "But I guessed that you'd finish the cells early, so I came to see if you were running the experiment. And indeed you are."

"Oh," Reid felt his face un-flush, his paleness signaling relaxation of the brain, which immediately generated new lies. "I'm just running the control sample to make sure that the experiment works. Mass spec can be finicky sometimes."

"Ah," Emily nodded in understanding, "Well, I'll leave you to it as soon as you give me your professional opinion on some new data that Garcia has just sent me."

"What data?" Reid closed all the windows on both computer screens to give Emily his full attention.

"Garcia's been digging up information on the patients in the clinical trial," Emily said. "Remember how we determined that patients under age 45 were primary targets for the rogue agent? What am I saying? Of course you remember! Anyway, here's a list of younger patients," she handed over a piece of paper, "And here's a list of older patients," she handed over several stapled pages. "Notice anything unusual?"

"The IQ scores of the younger patients form a very strange distribution," Reid noticed the anomaly right away.

"Exactly!" Emily ran her finger down the list. "As we'd expect, the IQ scores of the older patients form a bell curve, with the majority of patients in the 90-110 range and fewer patients on the low end and the high end. The IQ scores of the younger patients don't form a bell curve. They're totally flat! Everyone has pretty much the same IQ...Around 100, which is pretty much the average IQ for the human species. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"The younger patients were recruited to the study based on their IQ scores," Reid concluded. "They were chosen to fall into a narrow range of average intelligence."

"My thoughts exactly! But why?" Emily blinked expectantly.

"The pr..." Reid cut himself off before he could say the word "prion", "The rogue agent modulates intelligence."

"Is that even possible?" Emily frowned.

"In theory, yes," Reid replied. "Human intelligence is not well-understood, but like all bodily functions, it arises from the cells and tissues of the brain. Anything that modulates the brain at the cellular level has the potential to modulate intelligence. We just don't understand any of the mechanisms."

"So the rogue agent is a smart pill?" Emily asked. "That's crazier that I could have ever imagined."

"We don't know that," Reid said. "The rogue agent could be a stupid pill instead. We don't have any evidence either way. All we know is we have a group of patients recruited to the study based on IQ, which may or may not be a good quantifier of intelligence. But it makes sense that the UnSubs would do the study this way - recruit a bunch of people at the same IQ level and see if the agent causes IQ scores to increase or decrease from there. I really wonder if the agent has any effect."

"Could it actually work?" Emily shook her head in disbelief. "Could someone have actually figured out a way to make people smarter or...stupider?"

"Actually, that might explain the acetylcholine..." Reid mumbled softly.

"The neurotransmitter that controls muscle contractions?" Emily asked.

"Yes," Reid gazed at the wall beyond the computer screens. "Acetylcholine has a variety of functions in both the central and peripheral nervous systems. In the CNS, acetylcholine plays a role in synaptic plasticity, the neurological foundation for learning and memory and cognition, all the functions that we wrap up in a box and label as intelligence. A change, especially an enhancement, in the strength of the connection between two neurons in a synapse is thought to underlie most cognitive functions. Neurotransmitters like acetylcholine are the messengers between the neurons in the synapse. The pre-synaptic cell sends neurotransmitters across the synaptic cleft to the post-synaptic cell, which binds the neurotransmitters through receptors on the cell surface. Somehow, this process allows us to think."

"And your point is?" Emily frowned at the mass of terminology.

"The increased level of acetylcholine in the CSF sample may be the mechanism by which the rogue agent modulates intelligence," Reid replied robotically. "If it modulates intelligence at all," he added as a sanity check.

"Let's say that the agent is supposed to make people smarter," Emily said. "We'll give our UnSubs the very best of intentions. Is the agent supposed to make people smarter by giving them seizures and putting them into medically induced comas?"

"The seizures indicate that something has gone wrong in a small subset of people exposed to the agent," Reid transferred his gaze to the papers. "Of the 72 people presumably exposed to the pr...agent, only two have displayed adverse reactions. The rest appear to be perfectly healthy."

"So my mother has gotten the shitty luck of the draw?" Emily asked angrily. "First, she gets the pills that were meant for the younger group. Then, she gets the seizures that only show up in a small subset of people who take the pills. Meanwhile, everyone else is turning into you!"

"Pretty much," Reid replied impassively, "Except for the part about everyone else turning into me. We don't know enough to draw any conclusions about that. But regarding the seizures, personal biology is an important factor in determining the effects of drugs upon the body. Some people experience side effects when they take certain medications. Other people get off scot-free on the same meds. Many cancer drugs are only effective in 20% of patients, because those patients possess the requisite phenotype, essentially the correct protein profile, to respond to the drugs. Gleevec inhibits the bcr-abl fusion protein in patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia, but it doesn't work quite as well on related proteins, so it's not quite as effective for other types of cancers not caused by the bcr-abl fusion protein."

"Reid, can you please cease and desist with the medical terminology?" Emily sighed. "It's officially giving me a headache."

"In your mother's case, the rogue agent probably went haywire in her system, because she possesses an unknown feature of personal biology, such as a mutant protein that is normally asymptomatic but interacts with the agent to produce adverse reactions," Reid ignored Emily's complaints. "Isabella Torres has the same feature. My guess is we'll never know what it is."

"Thanks, Reid," Emily said sarcastically, "That's exactly what I needed to hear."

"The pr...agent may be modifying the structure of the synapse, causing the pre-synaptic cell to release excessive amounts of neurotransmitters into the synaptic cleft. PrPC, the normal version of PrP, is a membrane protein implicated in cell-cell communication in the brain. It may be present at the synapse."

"PrP? PrPC? What are you talking about?" Emily stared.

"PrP?" Reid snapped out of his trance at the mention of the problem that must not be named. "Oh sorry, I'm getting way off track. What I meant to say was that the rogue agent might be modulating synaptic transmission through an unknown mechanism."

"Thank you, Dr. Reid. That clears everything up tremendously. Please forgive my ignorance," Emily grabbed The Book and sucked up all its lukewarm contents. "Please summarize for me, in plain English, what you've been talking about for the past fifteen minutes."

"Sorry, Emily," Reid apologized, "I guess I was just thinking out loud. Uh...To summarize, your mother has gotten the shitty luck of the draw."

"Ugh!" Emily looked up at the ceiling in frustration. "You know what? I have an idea. We're both too sleep-deprived to have this conversation right now. How about we go home, get some sleep, and try this again later?"

"Yeah, OK," Reid agreed, "I'll see you back here tonight. I'm really tired, so I probably won't be going into the office this afternoon."

"That's fine," Emily said, "Hotch told us not to come in if we're not up to it. The rest of the team is working on a local case. Morgan assured me that they can survive this one case without us."

"Uh-huh," Reid nodded, tapping his heels against the metal legs of the chair, waiting for Emily to exit the lab so he could return to his cognitive trance. "I'll see you tomorrow. Hopefully, I'll have come up with some better ideas by then."

"Alright, see you later," Emily backed out of the lab, wheeling a large trash can behind her.

In the hallway, Emily applied the out-of-sight-out-of-mind principle to the conversation with Reid. Emily didn't know what was the matter with Reid. She had never seen him act this way before.

Normally, when Reid spewed out useless factoids, he did so with energy and focus, in a cadence of speech and a pitch of voice that conferred meaning to the obscure concepts. Today, he recited highly technical information in a trance-like state of distraction. He was only interested in his own train of thought. All other thoughts were pushed aside and shoved away, as if clearing a path to a goal. The path was a rainbow, and the goal was the pot of gold at the end of it.

* * *

Reid no longer cared about the case. He packed all the case-related information into boxes. He stacked the boxes into walls, like the walls of soda packs that adorned the entryways of grocery stores. He arranged the walls, pulling some of the boxes out and pushing some of the boxes in, until the walls spelled out the word "prion", over and over again.

Reid only cared about the prion. Now that he had found the problem, all he cared about was finding the solution.

The rogue agent was a prion. In Elizabeth Prentiss and Isabella Torres, it produced symptoms of a prion disease. Dr. Stanley Hawkins had read so many articles on the topic of myoclonic jerks and CJD, because myoclonic jerks were a late-stage symptom of CJD. Elizabeth Prentiss and Isabella Torres had only been participating in the clinical trial for a month. In a month, if the prion had already produced late-stage symptoms of a prion disease, then it was doing its work amazingly fast.

Prion diseases usually took years to develop. After the initial meal of tainted food, the symptoms took years to show up. It took years for the patient to experience cognitive impairments - memory loss, personality changes, hallucinations, dementia. In FFI, the symptoms began with episodes of insomnia and ended with total insomnia. The patient completely lost the ability to sleep. In CJD, the cognitive impairments were accompanied by physical impairments - myoclonic jerks, seizures, loss of motor control, loss of speech. After the symptoms appeared, the patient usually died within months. There was neither a treatment or a cure.

This prion was different. After the initial meal of tainted drug, the symptoms had taken one month to show up. Reid drew the only conclusion available.

If Thumper allowed the situation to go on for much longer, then by the time that Thumper came up with the magical elixir for Bambi's mother, there would be no use for it. The brain would have turned into a sponge, and the person within would have leaked out of the holes.

Reid jumped up from his chair, full of energy and focus, ready to go home and get some sleep. As long as he stayed awake, nothing would be accomplished. It was only in sleep that he could hope to solve a problem of this magnitude.

The three furry friends tapped their feet impatiently against the forest floor. They waited, eager for work, ready to tackle prions and synapses and neurotransmitters. They drew upon a vast store of irrationality that had no resting place within the brain of their host, because it permeated every crack and crevice. They - Thumper, Bambi, and Flower - and he - their host - believed that they could actually eliminate a prion that had already infiltrated the brain.

* * *

Emily no longer cared about the rules.

"Sorry, Hotch," she thought, "Blood is thicker than water."

Emily lay in bed, wishing that her bedroom were darker so that she could actually fall asleep. She used the downtime to formulate a plan.

Based on her research so far, Emily was convinced that Dr. Kenneth Lee and Dr. Sandra Maynard were guilty of wrongdoing. They were a husband-and-wife team working together to pursue a certain agenda. In the back of her mind, Emily had an inkling about the agenda. She didn't want to release the idea, not even to herself, until she had released the idea to someone else. The idea was bizarre, and Emily thought that Reid would be the only one who could appreciate it. She let it simmer, occasionally putting herself into its shoes, until it almost seemed like a good idea. She found herself almost agreeing with the rationale behind it.

Meanwhile, Emily focused on practical matters, ones that she could take into her own hands.

"Sorry, Hotch," she thought again.

Regardless of their specific roles in the case, Lee and Maynard were not innocent, because they had accepted a $50,000-check from PhenoPharm. They would not want the information, if it should leak out, to ruin their personal and professional reputations for life.

Emily held the information. It was the only power she had over the case. She was ready to abuse it. She thought that she could even abuse it within the confines of the rules. Nothing would ever leak into the media, because guilty parties, such as Lee and Maynard, would never publicize their interactions with other guilty parties, such as Reid and Prentiss.

Emily climbed out of bed. She plopped into an armchair and grabbed her laptop from the nightstand. She looked up the address of the Lee-Maynard home in College Park, Maryland.

"Sorry, Hotch," she thought a third time.

Emily dialed 7 for Reid as Google Maps displayed a satellite view of the neighborhood.

"Prion v. prion," Reid mumbled drowsily, "Hlllllllo?"


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

"Are we sure about this?" Reid tugged nervously at Emily's sleeve on the back porch of the Lee-Maynard home.

"Yes!" Emily hissed as she peeked through the kitchen window, her breath fogging up the glass. "Everything is right on track. Garcia disabled the security system. The kids are at their grandparents' house. So is the dog. Mommy and Daddy are out for dinner to kick off their romantic wedding anniversary weekend. We really lucked out on that front."

"Yeah, we lucked out," Reid scanned the backyard for absent canines. "Otherwise, we'd have had to find a way to get the kids out of the house. Can you believe that Lee and Maynard have six children together? How did they manage it?"

"How did they manage to conceive six children?" Emily snickered as she eyed the door to kick it down. "Do you really need me to explain it to you, Reid? Tell you what, I've got an annual checkup scheduled for next month. I'll bring back a pamphlet for you."

"No, Emily, that's not what I meant!" Reid whispered adamantly. "What I meant was how did Lee and Maynard manage to raise such a large family while maintaining such busy careers? Hotch and JJ can barely juggle their jobs and their only children. Maynard is a tenured professor at a large public university. How does she balance her career with six kids?"

"I dunno," Emily kicked down the door, flipped back her flying ponytail, and walked calmly through the open doorway. "Maybe she's Wonder Woman? By day, she coaches her daughter's soccer team. By night, she masterminds unauthorized experiments on human intelligence."

"So you really think that she's the driver behind all this?" Reid drew his revolver as he followed Emily into the house. "That she's just using her husband's job at the FDA to achieve her own ends?"

"Yeah, Maynard's the leader, but Lee isn't exactly an innocent bystander," Emily swept her flashlight over the dark environs. "The scheme was originally her idea, but once she let him in on it, he was just as big a believer as she was. I bet they've been planning this for years, and they finally hit the jackpot when Lee was assigned to the Alzheimer's study. It's not like they could've run their cognitive and brain imaging tests during any random clinical trial. It would look awfully weird for them to be giving IQ tests to prospective participants in a cancer drug study."

"It makes sense...It all makes sense," Reid peered in both directions in the hallway that separated the utilitarian back of the house from the presentable front.

"Let's go wait for them on the stairs," Emily led the way towards the foyer. "Remember our plan for greeting the happy couple?"

"Yeah, as soon as they come into the house, I'll block off the front door, and you'll force them into the dining room. We'll all sit down at the dining table for a nice civil conversation. We'll clarify the agenda, negotiate a stop to the experiments, and obtain an antidote for the agent, if there is one. Hotch won't find out about any of this for as long as we can help it. Eventually, when he does find out, I'll say that you held a gun to my head and made me help you. You'll deny it, but he'll believe me instead of you. Hotch trusts men more than women. He'll burn you at the stake, and I'll spread your ashes in a special ceremony by the sea."

"You wish!" Emily made the motion to pistol whip her seriously deluded accomplice. "It's 9:15," she checked her watch, "I wonder how long this hot date is going to take."

"I wouldn't know," Reid said, "I'm not much of an expert on hot dates."

"You need to get out more," Emily remarked.

"With whom?" Reid asked.

"Human females would be a good start," Emily offered words of wisdom. "If you don't get out more, you're never going to get a chance to procreate. That would be such a shame. Your genius genes would be totally wasted. What you need to do is to father a horde of genius offspring to tackle all the world's problems, one by one. They could be like a BAU of little Reids, except in lieu of catching psycho serial killers, they apply their brilliant minds to global warming, poverty, HIV/AIDS, etc. The only caveat is that with your luck, they'll probably grow up to become psycho serial killers, and that would actually add to the world's problems."

"Thanks, Emily," Reid said, "I appreciate the vote of confidence in my parenting skills. But you're right about the procreation part. Many studies have shown that IQ is genetically determined - up to 80% nature and only 20% nurture. Human intelligence is a complex polygenic trait, but it does appear to be largely inherited."

"Maybe you should consider making a contribution or several thousand to your local sperm bank," Emily suggested.

"Maybe I should..." Reid considered with a distant look in his eyes.

"I'm only kidding!" Emily made the pistol-whipping motion again. "God, stop it, Reid, you're freaking me out. For a second there, you were starting to sound like one Derek Morgan, who fantasizes about doing a great service to the world by spreading his genetic material around."

"Morgan doesn't want to spread his genetic material around," Reid defended his absent friend. "He doesn't want to have kids. He says that he prefers to practice."

"He calls it practice?" Emily grimaced. "You know what, Reid? We need to bury this conversation right now. Tell me about your experiments instead. That'll get our minds out of this rut."

"Rut is a term for the mating season of ungulates such as deer, elk, and moose," Reid said. "During the rut, deer, especially bucks, become more active and less cautious, making them more susceptible to both hunters and motor vehicles."

"We're trying to get _out_ of this rut! Out! Out!" Emily insisted.

"OK, OK," Reid edged away from the intimidating human female. "Um...About my experiments, Emily," he threw caution to the stillness inside the house, "I need to tell you something. I really should've told you this earlier, but I...uh...I don't know why I didn't tell you. It's about the rogue agent. I've identified it, and I'm pretty sure that it's a pr..."

"They're back!" Emily took up position on one side of the front door and gestured towards the other side for Reid.

Reid leaned against the wall around the corner from the front door. Muffled voices from outside coincided with the turning of the key in the lock. As soon as the cold night air rushed in, Reid darted out of his hiding place to slam the door shut, while Emily aimed her weapon at the shocked couple.

"Into the dining room," Emily snarled.

Dr. Sandra Maynard shrank back from the gun, bumping into her husband and stomping on his foot. Dr. Kenneth Lee grabbed his wife's hand and quickly pulled her into the dining room.

"Sit," Emily gestured towards the dining table.

"What's going on? Who are you? What do you want?" Lee demanded in a firmer tone than Emily had anticipated.

"Sit," Emily responded without acknowledging the questions. "You first, Dr. Lee...Then you, Dr. Maynard."

Lee sat down in the nearest dining chair. Reid handcuffed him to the armrests using two pairs of handcuffs. Without hesitation, he did the same to Maynard. The couple stared fearfully at the FBI agents. Reid wondered if they were imagining their deaths at the hands of a pair of sadistic serial killers.

"We're only here to talk," Emily moved to the head of the dining table. "Nothing's going to happen to you, as long as you answer our questions truthfully."

"I don't understand," Maynard said, regaining a cold calmness that Emily guessed was her usual demeanor. "Who are you? What do you want from us? You can have whatever you want from the house. We won't call the police after you leave. We'll pretend that nothing ever happened. You can take whatever you want and get the hell out."

"Vorastatin and Alzheimer's," Emily ignored the petite brunette woman and addressed the bald bespectacled man, "Dr. Lee, do these terms ring any bells for you?"

"I'm not saying anything unless you tell me who you are," Lee said cautiously.

"Let's just say that we all share the same boss," Emily said. "We're all employed by Uncle Sam to serve the public. The only difference is that while we're serving the public..." she gestured to include herself and Reid, "You're abusing your position at the FDA to pursue your personal agenda. Or your wife's personal agenda," she looked down her nose at the stone-faced woman.

"Can you please get to the point?" Maynard snapped. "What do you want from us?"

"We want to know why you're substituting a proteinaceous infectious particle in place of a statin medication in a FDA clinical trial," Reid spoke up for the first time.

He avoided the word "prion", using the full term instead, desperately wishing that he had gotten a chance to finish his confession to Emily. Before entering the house, he had believed that hiding the truth had been a good idea. Why would he tell her that her mother's medical situation was absolutely intractable? Who in their right mind would wish to know that?

After entering the house, he had realized that he had been behaving like a selfish idiot. He had not hidden the truth to protect her. He had done it to protect himself, because he had never believed, not even for a second, that he could possibly come up with a solution to the problem. Like the schizophrenia problem, the prion problem was absolutely intractable. That was the reality of the situation, and Reid had allowed himself to indulge in fantasy for way too long.

"That's the first thing we want to know," Emily said, "The first of many things. But we wouldn't expect you to tell us anything without a little incentive to push you along. Remember PhenoPharm? The pharmaceutical company that developed vorastatin? I have it on good authority that PhenoPharm is eager to reap the rewards from its millions of dollars of R&D investments. But they're not the only ones looking to reap the rewards. A certain FDA administrator seems to have accepted a $50,000 bribe from the company in exchange for pushing the drug through clinical trials. The check was made out to a certain FDA administrator's wife, as shown here," she motioned for Reid to unfold a printout of the check photo. "You tell us everything we want to know, and you won't find this photo leaked into the media. Those annoying news reporters are constantly on the lookout for juicy government scandals. Sooner or later, this story is going to find its way to national television. How are you going to support your kids if your careers are ruined? Are you going to be able to find new jobs once your personal and professional reputations have been dragged through the mud? Is the reward really worth the risk?"

"Yes!" the woman answered sharply, "It _is_!"

"Sandy..." Lee shot a warning glance at his wife.

"Don't Sandy me!" Maynard cut him off. "If they want the story, we'll give it to them."

Reid looked across the table at Emily. She met his gaze, which reflected her own uncertainty. Even with a gun in her face, Maynard was strong and defiant. At the same time, she was giving in to their demands. Her behavior was veering into the unpredictable.

"The agent must be working," Emily tested aloud.

"It is," Maynard replied. "The IQ scores of the prion recipients have increased by 25% after only a month on the treatment. We've converted painfully average individuals into potentially useful members of society."

"Prion?" Emily latched onto the one word that Reid had dreaded hearing. "The agent is a prion? Like the prion that causes Mad Cow Disease?"

"Yes," Maynard replied. "We call it CrCSp, the opposite of PrPSc. The abbreviation doesn't stand for anything, but I think it's got a nice ring to it. It has the opposite effect as PrPSc. It enhances human intelligence. It improves the human brain."

"And the human species," Lee added.

"How is giving a smart pill to a few patients in a clinical trial going to improve the human species?" Emily asked.

"The clinical trial is only the first step," Maynard explained. "We have to the test the prion somewhere. Why not do it in the context of a legitimate scientific study? The important thing is we're getting results. We're getting absolute proof that human intelligence can be significantly enhanced. The effects are permanent. This isn't a hormone with temporary effects, like a birth control pill. This is a prion. It spreads throughout the brain, from one neuron to another. It remodels the proteins and cells and tissues. It remodels the entire brain. We now have a proven method to elevate human individuals from dullness to brightness so they can contribute to, rather than be a drain upon, human society."

"What about the side effects?" Emily asked angrily. "What about the patients who respond poorly to the pill? The ones who are too busy having seizures to use their newly acquired intellectual abilities?"

"No drug is effective for 100% of the population," Lee replied. "We're doing pretty well with this clinical trial. The prion is working in 97% of study participants. Only 3% have displayed adverse reactions."

"Are these people nothing but percentages to you?" Emily asked, edging closer to Maynard, bringing her gun closer to Maynard's face.

"In a word, yes," Maynard answered without flinching. "We're scientists. We perform impartial experiments. We analyze the results impartially. The only way to do that is to use cold hard numbers. Statistics."

"Think of it this way," Lee explained. "If there's ever a worldwide outbreak of Ebola hemorrhagic fever, then 97% of people on Earth would die from it. The 3% that survived would've had a natural immunity to Ebolavirus. 97%, 3%...3%, 97%. In our study, most of the chips fall on the positive side. The 3% are sacrificed for the good of the 97%. In the case of an Ebola outbreak, the 3% would be the winners in the human evolution sweepstakes. They'd get to seed the next generation of humans, who would inherit their genetic immunity to Ebolavirus. Ebolavirus would no longer be an agent of disease. Homo sapiens would have defeated Ebolavirus."

"And what disease are you trying to cure?" Reid mumbled, knowing full well what the answer was going to be.

"The disease of stupidity!" Maynard replied in excitement. "Finally! Someone who gets it! I like you," she smiled at Reid, "You're sharp."

"And how do you plan to cure this disease?" Reid ignored her comments about him.

"Simple," Maynard explained. "Phenotype to genotype. Once we've perfected the prion - the phenotype - we can reverse engineer a nucleic acid construct - the genotype - to encode the protein. We can introduce the construct into human cells in the form of a retrovirus. Did you know that retroviruses, like HIV, can integrate their genetic material into the host genome? All it takes is a couple of enzymes that come with the virus. We can use a viral vector as gene therapy for the disease of stupidity that increasingly plagues the human species."

"How noble of you," Reid muttered.

"Thanks for noticing," Maynard said brightly. "As an expert on human evolution, I can safely say that at no time in our existence has the human species been in such need of a cure. Throughout human evolution, nature has always selected for the smartest of us. The most rational and the most creative. The fastest thinkers, the deepest thinkers, the broadest thinkers, the thinkers outside the boxes. Evolution by natural selection. It's fine-tuned our brains for millions of years. It's always made us smarter and better, until now."

"What changed?" Emily asked.

"Humans developed civilization," Maynard explained. "Modern civilization - a worldwide dystopia that no longer selects for intelligence. Human society now selects against intelligence. The smarter you are, the fewer offspring you have. It's the dim-witted ones who end up fucking like bunnies and polluting the planet with dim-witted copies of themselves."

"Is that why the two of you have six children?" Reid asked, unable to suppress a smirk as Lee glared at him.

"Our children are our contributions to society," Maynard answered confidently, refusing to be insulted. "We can sleep with a clear conscience, knowing that we gave the world six intellectually gifted individuals to tackle all its many problems. Our children have received the best of both worlds - nature and nurture."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Emily said, "Not about the nature or the nurture. Please enlighten me if I'm too dim-witted to understand, but how exactly is a smart pill going to evolve the human species?"

"You really are too dim-witted to understand," Maynard said. "I hope you don't have any children. What about you?" she turned to Reid. "Do you understand? Do you have any children?"

"You're going to introduce the viral vector into the germline," Reid replied. "You're going to target egg cells and sperm cells. The construct that encodes the prion is going to integrate itself into the haploid genomes of germ cells. All offpsring produced from the infected germ cells will express the prion in all their cells, including their neurons and their own germ cells. The enhancement in intelligence will be passed on through the generations. You'll be instigating another Great Leap Forward. Evolution by unnatural selection. Everyone who responds poorly to the prion will die. Adapt or die."

"Very good, but you didn't answer my other question," Maynard said slyly. "Do you, or do you not, have any children?"

"No, I don't have any children," Reid answered.

"What a shame," Maynard shook her head. "Do you find it difficult to get dates with dim-witted women? Do you find it impossible to have relationships with dim-witted women? Do you wish that there were more people like you? Do you wish that you had a larger pool of potential mates to choose from? How old are you?"

"I'm 29."

"You still have time," Maynard said, "You still have all the time in the world. It's us women who have to be concerned with time. How old are you?" she asked Emily.

"None of your business," Emily snapped, "Don't worry, I don't have any children."

"No need to get defensive about it," Maynard snapped back. "You're not so bad. If paired with the right partner, you could produce intelligent offspring. Or you could play it safe and wait for our developments, but I'm guessing that you don't really have the luxury of waiting. You look around...40? I doubt that you've got much in the way of eggs left to infect."

"Oh, that hurts," Emily sneered, "That's why I cry myself to sleep every night."

"Enough!" Lee tried to nugde his wife into silence. "We've answered all your questions. It's time for you to get the hell out."

"You haven't even come close to answering all our questions," Emily leaned over the red-faced man.

"I'm sorry, Agent Prentiss," Lee rolled his eyes, "This is all you're going to get from us."

"What's wrong, Agent Prentiss? Surprised that we know your name, Emily?" Maynard asked derisively. "Did you forget the fact that you're listed as the next-of-kin on Elizabeth Prentiss's consent form? It didn't exactly take a stunning leap of intuition to figure out who you are and why you're here. And why the FBI won't be coming to shut us down anytime soon."

"I wouldn't screw with the clinical trial if I were you," Lee threatened. "I wouldn't leak anything into the media either. You came here to get an antidote for you mother. We have an antidote. It neutralizes the prion. It re-shapes the prion into a non-functional form and directs it to the proteasome for degradation."

"Give us the antidote," Reid heard the words leave his mouth without his consent. "We'll let you continue the study if you give us the antidote."

"Reid..." Emily looked across the table.

"Give us the antidote," Reid stared into Maynard's eyes. "It's an equal exchange, a win-win for all of us."

"Good try, Reid, is it?" Maynard smirked. "As soon as we give you the antidote, you'll come barging in with the rest of the FBI. I'm sorry, but we don't suffer from the disease that afflicts most of humanity."

"I'll help you with the study if you give us the antidote," Reid bargained. "The more I think about it, the more I find myself agreeing with you. I don't think you should stop with the 25% enhancement that you've observed so far. You should go for more. Why stop at 125? Why not go for 140? Why not go for 187? That's my IQ. And it's Dr. Reid to you."

"Impressive, Dr. Reid," Maynard remarked. "I enjoy your thinking. We'd love to have you on the team. I'm sure you'll have many valuable insights to contribute."

"I'm sure I will," Reid said. "I've already got some ideas for inserting the prion gene into the host genome. With a standard viral vector, the construct would insert itself into the genome at an arbitrary location. That could cause all kinds of problems. What if the construct inserts itself into the middle of a crucial gene? That would destroy any chance of producing viable offspring. Or maybe the construct inserts itself next to a silencer sequence. The repressor protein binds to the silencer sequence, and voila, gene expression is shut down for a sizable region of the chromosome. No gene expression, no prion protein. You may be an expert in your own field, Dr. Maynard, but I don't think your anthropological expertise is going to help you on this project. You may be able to use the biological terminology, but you don't really know what you're talking about, do you? And you, Dr. Lee, you're an FDA administrator. You've got advanced degrees in biology and chemistry, but how much of your education do you really remember? How much scientific research have you actually done, with your own hands and with your own brain? Has it been twenty years since your last stint in the lab? Are you going to be able to solve all these problems of transcriptional and translational regulation? Are you an expert in the field of gene expression? What about Dr. Ames and Dr. Hawkins? Are they in on this project, or are you just using them for their scientific expertise? Where did you get the prion anyway? I'm having serious doubts that you produced it yourself. Did you get it from Ames or Hawkins? Dr. Hawkins is a medical doctor. You're deluding yourselves if you're planning to rely on his scientific expertise. That leaves Dr. Ames and Dr. Reid. Which one of these people has an IQ of 187? Which one of these people suffers less from the disease of stupidity? By your measure, which one of these people has more potential to contribute to your project? It's your choice. My help for your antidote."

"You've got a point, Dr. Reid," Maynard maintained her composure. "I'm not a molecular biologist. My husband is not a research scientist. We might have to depend on your knowledge for the success of the project. You can have the antidote on one condition. I want to see you work out a method for reliable insertion of the prion gene into the host genome, such that the prion protein is reliably expressed in neurons and germ cells. I want to see it in a human, not a mouse. I want to see the prion protein raise someone's IQ above 150. I want you to do it to her," she transferred her steely blue gaze to Emily.

"How about it, Agent Prentiss?" Lee challenged Emily. "We're willing if you're willing. There's a prion eating away at your mother's brain as we speak. I hope you don't waste too much time weighing the pros and cons."

"I'm not going to waste any time," Emily replied. "I've already made up my mind. The prion improves the human brain. My brain is dying to be improved. Maybe I'll finally be worthy of conceiving children with my last remaining egg cells. Let's do it," she raised her eyebrows at Reid.

"Emily..." Reid began.

"Don't Emily me!" Emily warned. "You've been lying to me for days. When did you find out about the prion? Did you think I was too fragile to handle the bad news, or did you think I was too stupid to understand your experiments?"

"Emily, I didn't..."

"Shut up, Reid!" Emily cut him off. "It's settled," she nodded at Lee and Maynard. "Dr. Reid is going to come up with a viral vector to deliver the prion gene into the host genome. I'm volunteering to be the guinea pig. I'm looking forward to it, because I've always wanted to know what it feels like to be Dr. Reid, Super Genius! We'll get the antidote, and you'll get the protocol, but not until the antidote works on my mother. In the meantime, you'll put your current experiments on hold. I want everyone in the study back on vorastatin or placebo."

"Fine," Maynard agreed, "Sounds fair to me. I'd love to shake on it," she looked at her handcuffs.

"Uncuff them," Emily said to Reid. "The sooner we get out of here, the sooner you can start work on the protocol."

Reid stared at Emily, found her glaring at him, and did as he was told. He uncuffed the couple from their dining chairs. Lee remained seated, rubbing his hands over his wrists. Maynard stood up and stretched.

She offered her hand to Emily, "We have an agreement, Agent Prentiss."

"We have an agreement," Emily shook the woman's hand, her face completely inscrutable, her demeanor completely impassive.

"Dr. Reid?" Maynard offered her hand to Reid.

Reid gulped visibly as he shook the woman's hand. He felt like he was making a deal with the Devil. He glanced nervously at Emily, found her still glaring at him, and averted his eyes.

In his mind, the gears turned, seeking a way out of the ill-conceived arrangement. The arrangement was impossible on so many levels. First of all, Reid wasn't sure that he could produce a reliable viral vector for gene therapy. Gene therapy, though much-touted as a cure for a variety of heritable diseases, was mostly ineffective. The gene therapy problem was only slightly less intractable than the prion problem.

Second, there was no universe in which Reid was going to use Emily as a guinea pig. He would rather use himself. For a moment, he seriously considered using himself. The moment passed when he realized that he was the worst possible guinea pig for such an experiment. His IQ was already 187. How much higher could it possibly go? How could he possibly tell if a prion were making him smarter? There was no way he could use himself as a guinea pig, unless there was some unknown arena of human intelligence that no one had yet elucidated. Perhaps there were such things as genius savants, but Reid didn't want to bet on it.

Reid shivered in the cold night air as he followed Emily out of the Lee-Maynard home. He put a stop to his private machinations. He focused in upon a single statement that Lee had made regarding the antidote. Lee had said that the antidote re-shaped the prion into a non-functional form. As far as Reid knew, the only things that could re-shape proteins were other proteins. Thumper, Bambi, and Flower had been driving down the right track, before they had been derailed by the annoying phone call that had led to the unnecessary meeting. The only things that could re-shape prions were other prions.

"Prion v. Prion," Reid thought, "Old habits die hard."

Even with impossible arrangements, there was always a way out, if only one were clever enough to see it or diligent enough to build it.

* * *

Please note that the views expressed in this chapter do not reflect the views of the author or any of the food items that the author is going to consume this weekend. Happy Thanksgiving, all who celebrate it!


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

On the car ride back to her apartment, Emily Prentiss applied the silent treatment, a form of passive social rejection designed to inflict emotional pain upon the subject. She ignored all of Reid's furtive glances and tentative gestures. When he tried to speak to her, she turned on the radio, tuned in to the mariachi music station, and jacked up the volume. When they arrived at her building, she tried to slam the door shut on him, but he managed to wiggle through on sheer skinniness. When they arrived at her apartment, she successfully slammed the door shut on him.

"Emily! Let me in! We need to talk! We need to figure out what to do next!"

Emily ignored the whisper-shouting in the hallway. She poured herself a glass of chardonnay, downed it in several gulps, and poured another. She brought the glass to her lips, intending to down the sweet alcoholic elixir in a single gulp, but a thunderous crashing noise at the door jolted the glass out of her hands and onto the kitchen floor. Emily sputtered angrily, stomped to the door, and threw it open to find Reid slumped against the opposite wall.

"What are you _doing_?" Emily asked, half in exasperation, half in confusion, half in sadistic pleasure.

"I tried to kick down the door," Reid groaned sheepishly, rubbing his back, where he had impacted the wall after being rejected by the door. "It didn't work. Why does it always look so easy when Morgan does it? Or when you do it?" he rubbed his wrist, which he had sprained in an attempt to break the fall.

"I dunno," Emily sneered sarcastically. "Maybe it's because Morgan and I have BMIs in the human, rather than the stick insect, range?"

"I guess," Reid transferred his eyes from Emily's feet to Emily's face in a quantized leap. "Look, Emily, I'm really sorry that I didn't tell you about the prion, and I don't expect you to forgive me anytime soon, but can we please talk tonight? We really need to figure out what to do next. I'm not leaving until you let me in. I'm going to try to kick down the door all night, or at least until the neighbors call the police," he assumed a mulish pigheaded expression that Emily had never seen before.

Emily rolled her eyes, backed out of the doorway, and waved Reid into the apartment. Reid bounced up from the floor, dusted himself off, and ambled through the doorway in a dignified manner. Emily made a mental note of the proceedings, which confirmed the hypotheses that she had read about in the latest American Psychiatric Association pamphlets. Indeed, in young immature males, social rejection led to aggression, just as it did in male romantic partners, who were far more likely to stalk and murder their former wives and girlfriends than females who had suffered the same perceived mistreatment.

"What is there to discuss?" Emily closed the door, leaned against it, and folded her arms over her chest. "Why don't you go play with your little vials and pipettors so you can continue making discoveries and keeping me in the dark about them?"

"That was a mistake, and I'm really sorry," Reid said quietly. "I should've told you about the prion the moment that I found out about it. No excuses," he looked Emily in the eye.

Emily stared back, wondering if this was a novel manipulation tactic that Reid had devised just now. Then, she realized that during his years in the BAU, while he had gained enough social experience to manipulate UnSubs, he had better think once, twice, and thrice before testing any manipulation tactics on her. She nodded, accepting his apology silently, but not without casting a series of dirty glances to make him squirm.

"Why didn't you tell me about the prion?" Emily demanded. "How long were you planning to hide it? Why were you trying to hide it?"

"I don't know," Reid answered, fidgeting where he stood before her. "It was a dumb decision on my part. I wanted to tell you at the house. I even tried to tell you, but I didn't get a chance to finish before..."

"I don't really care about that anymore," Emily cut him off impatiently. "All I care about is the fact that my mother has a prion in her brain. Not _a_ prion! Lots and lots of prions! Am I right? Am I right about how prions work? They multiply by converting normal versions of themselves into prions? Like assimilation by the Borg?"

"Yes, and I have an idea for..." Reid started to explain his approach to the prion problem.

"And diseases caused by prions are universally incurable?" Emily cut him off again. "Incurable in all their forms, from mad cow disease to...whatever the disease is called in humans?"

"Yes, prion diseases are incurable in all their forms, but I've been thinking that..."

"So my mother's only hope is the antidote?" Emily asked.

"If there is one," Reid said.

"You don't think there is?" Emily gawked for a moment, suddenly taken aback by the notion that the couple had lied about the antidote.

Normally, she would not have batted an eye at the lies of a pair of eugenics fanatics, but this time, she was personally caught up in the turmoil, so she was not in possession of her cool collected self. This time, it was not the family of the victim who needed her help. This time, she was the family of the victim, and it was her who needed the help of others. She needed the antidote. She needed there to be an antidote. To suggest that there was none was a gut punch and bitch slap all packed into a single blow.

"I don't know if there's an antidote," Reid said. "I don't think we should automatically take their word that there is one. Those two, especially Maynard, are master manipulators. They could probably do our jobs as well as we can, even without any of the training."

"Lee described the antidote in detail," Emily squinted at the floor, trying to recall the exact words, grasping at the words to convince herself that the object they described was within her reach.

"Yes, Lee said that the antidote re-shaped the prion into a non-functional form and directed it to the proteasome for degradation," Reid recited. "He basically laid out the mechanism of action of the antidote. If I were him, I don't think I would've revealed so much about the mechanism."

"So where does that leave us?" Emily lowered herself slowly to the floor. "Are we going to hope that Lee and Maynard were telling the truth?"

"Yes, that's exactly what we're going to hope. We're going to follow through with the agreement," Reid raised himself onto the kitchen counter. "Like we promised, we're going to raise your IQ score above 150. Like they promised, they're going to hand over the antidote. We're not required to hand over the protocol unless the antidote works on your mother."

"You really think that you'll be able to develop a gene therapy protocol before time runs out for my mother?"

"No, that's not what I said," Reid replied. "I highly doubt that anyone could develop a gene therapy protocol in a matter of weeks. I think we're dealing with a timeline of a couple of weeks, a month at most, based on the progression of the symptoms. You're the one who's got a couple of weeks to raise your IQ score above 150."

"Excuse me?" Emily asked in bewilderment.

"You're going to study the standard IQ test, over and over again, until you score 150 or above," Reid declared, without the slightest hint of hesitation. "Remember high school? It'll be just like studying for the SATs, except there's no factual information to study. It'll be an exercise in familiarity. Practice makes perfect. For a naturally intelligent person like yourself, you should be able to raise your IQ score with practice."

"What are you talking about?" Emily demanded in aggravation. "You sound totally insane! This sounds crazy! Are you telling me that intelligence can be learned? That people can raise their IQ scores significantly if they practice the IQ test?"

"Yes!" Reid jumped off the kitchen counter in excitement. "That's exactly what I'm telling you! Intelligence _can_ be learned! IQ scores _can_ be raised! For a naturally intelligent person like yourself, the process should be fairly easy."

"I've never heard this before," Emily shook her head skeptically. "Once a person reaches adulthood, isn't intelligence basically set in stone? Once nature and nurture have both had their turns? The only argument is which of the two plays a bigger role, and it seems like nature has been declared the winner. Doesn't that make intelligence even more immutable?"

"No! It doesn't! Forget intelligence for a minute," Reid plopped down on the floor next to Emily. "Intelligence is not relevant to this discussion. What we're really talking about are IQ scores. I don't care if intelligence is set in stone. Which it isn't," he whispered, as if disclosing a piece of classified information. "But IQ tests, like any other test, can be learned. Have you ever take the GRE?"

"The graduate school entrance exam? Yeah, I took it my senior year of college," Emily said. "At the time, I was thinking of pursuing a Ph.D. in Literature."

"Remember the analytical portion of the exam?" Reid asked. "The part with the logic questions and reasoning games? Five children have five cakes on five tables. Herbert has the chocolate cake on the middle table. Here's a set of clues to determine which child has which cake on which table."

"Yeah, I remember," Emily said. "Those questions were pointless, but at least you didn't have to study for them, like you had to brush up on math and vocabulary for the quantitative and verbal sections. Oh wait, you didn't have to study for any of it, did you?"

"No, of course not," Reid replied. "But my point is that an IQ test is similar to the analytical section of the GRE. IQ tests contain the same types of logic and reasoning questions, plus some additional word games, number games, and pattern-matching games, which all come down to logic and reasoning. That's why an IQ test is such a poor measure of intelligence. Where's the assessment of synthesis, used in science and social science to construct theories out of disparate pieces of data? What about lateral thinking, the ability to solve problems using an indirect approach? And creativity, the highest plane of human cognition and the last to evolve, crucial for success in every field from science to engineering to literature to art? These are all elements of intelligence, but none of them are measured in an IQ test. The skills measured in an IQ test are the ones that are easiest to measure, and they're also the ones that are easiest to learn."

"It's a lot easier to teach someone analytical skills than creativity," Emily nodded in agreement. "Isn't that the point of school?"

"Yeah, and that's where you'll be going for the next week or however long it takes you to raise your IQ score above 150," Reid announced.

"Urgh," Emily covered her face with her hands.

"You're going to take IQ test after IQ test, familiarizing yourself with the questions and answers until you've got circles, triangles, and squares dancing around in your dreams. Your score is going to climb steadily from your current level of supposed intelligence."

"_Supposed_ intelligence?" Emily turned and snarled.

"Supposed as in 'IQ tests supposedly measure intelligence', not as in 'Emily Prentiss is supposedly intelligent'," Reid flinched under the terrifying gaze.

"Ah, good save," Emily lowered her hackles. "But what if there's no antidote? Then all my efforts would've been wasted."

"That's where my efforts come in," Reid said. "I'm going to attempt to come up with an antidote, based on what Lee said about the mechanism. I'm going to design and synthesize a set of proteins to re-shape the prion. I'm going to test them _in vitro_, then _in vivo_ in prion-infected mice."

"Is that possible?" Emily asked. "You can actually design and synthesize proteins?"

"Yes, small proteins of 200 to 300 amino acids are within our reach," Reid explained. "It takes a lot of work in the lab, but the techniques are established - peptide synthesis, followed by chemical ligation. The hard part happens _in cerebro_ - designing a sequence that folds spontaneously into a structure that neutralizes the prion. Actually, most of the design work takes place _in silico_, using computational methods that simulate protein folding to achieve the lowest energy state. It's not easy, but we've got sequence and structural information on a variety of prions, including PrP and CrC, as soon as we get the specifiications from Lee and Maynard. We're going to synthesize a whole library of proteins and hope that one of them turns out to be a prion that destroys another prion without destroying the brain itself."

"I'm going to help you with the experiments," Emily said. "I'm not making the mistake of leaving you alone in lab again."

"You've got other things to work on," Reid argued.

"I'm going to help you with the experiments," Emily began re-shaping her face into a terrifying snarl.

"You're going to help me with the experiments," Reid repeated in the manner of a newly assimilated Borg, his face re-shaping itself into a flinch before re-shaping itself back into its lowest energy state.

"When do we start?" Emily asked.

"Tomorrow," Reid answered. "Bright and early on Saturday morning. How about we meet in lab at 9?"

"Perfect," Emily agreed with two thumbs-up.

She wobbled slowly to her feet, slightly buzzed from wine. She swept up the broken glass in the kitchen as Reid watched from his position by the door. When she finished, she straightened to see him smiling, waving, and getting ready to leave the apartment.

"Wait, Reid," Emily said. "It's after midnight. It's slushing outside. The roads are dark and icy. Why don't you stay over tonight? I'll make you breakfast in bed in the morning, before we go off to lab."

"Stay here?" Reid asked, staring blankly at the facing windows as he digested the alien concept.

"Yeah, I'll make up the couch for you," Emily said brightly. "Unless you're a pretty princess, and you need to sleep on the softest of featherbeds? In that case, I'll make up the couch for myself."

"No, Emily, I'll sleep on the couch," Reid set down his messenger bag and took off his jacket. "I'm not as wimpy as you think, even if I'm not good at kicking down doors."

"Don't worry, Pretty Princess, I don't think you're wimpy at all," Emily teased.

"You sound like Morgan," Reid pouted. "'Pretty Princess' sounds like something Morgan would call me. Or maybe Garcia. Garcia has no respect for gender boundaries."

"Another good save, Dr. Reid," Emily clapped in friendly mockery. "Comparing me to Morgan, thinking better of it, and comparing me to Garcia instead...Quite genius, even for you. Here's a little prize," she handed him a glass of chardonnay, "Drink up, Pretty Princess."

"Yum," Reid downed the glass in a single gulp. "I much prefer the sweet white wines to the red ones that taste like cough syrup."

"Cabernet Robitussin?" Emily giggled as she downed her own glass.

"Pinot Vicks," Reid giggled back, then hiccuped.

"No more alcohol for you," Emily snatched away the wine bottle that Reid had grabbed from the counter. "You're suffering from myoclonic jerks. There's probably a prion in your brain. Your brain is probably full of prions, all different kinds, all fucking like bunnies and making prion copies of their prion selves," she swayed back and forth over a stool.

"What an interesting image," Reid considered, yawning and slurping up the last drops in Emily's glass. "I'm tired. Let's go to bed."

"OK, Pretty Princess," Emily snorted. "I'm going to get some blankets and pillows. Don't you worry, Pretty Princess, they'll be of the softest lambswool and eiderdown. You won't feel a pea when you cuddle up in them."

"Thanks, Emily," Reid sat down on the couch to wait.

Emily weaved her way into the bedroom, where she retrieved sheets, blankets, and pillows from the closet. By the time she returned to the living room, Reid was already asleep, his face buried in the back of the couch, his ass hanging off the side. Emily nudged him farther onto the couch and laid a sheet and blanket over him. He didn't seem interested in the pillow that she tried to shove under his head.

"Prion," he mumbled in his furry friends dream, his mind already tackling the problem that, having been named and shared, could now be solved.

Emily gave up, returned to the kitchen, and washed out the wine glasses. Before she headed off to bed, she took a photo of Reid, now curled into a ball, in his nest of softest lambswool and eiderdown. She also made an audio recording of his snoring, as evidence to whip out later, when he would inevitably deny the involuntary act. Next time he slept over at her apartment, she would make him wear Breathe Right nasal strips and make fun of him for looking ridiculous. Perhaps she would be able to purchase "Hello Kitty" versions from a random Japanese website. He would look even more ridiculous with those.

"Garcia would know where to get them," Emily snickered, half in amusement at Reid, half in exasperation at herself, half in sadistic pleasure of a generalized nature.

She tiptoed over the hardwood floor to the bedroom. She closed the door behind her and jumped onto the bed, bouncing a little on the firm mattress that oscillated on its springs. Yet again, just when she had thought that she had gotten rid of it, the teenage persona had reared its head of faux emo hair. Its gothic black fingernails were digging into every corner of Emily's mind and holding on for good.

"What do you mean 'next time'?" Emily asked herself in her warm nest.

* * *

Reid spent all of Saturday in lab - mixing chemicals, fiddling with software, eating and drinking - and it was the first normal day that he had ever known in his life.

The normalcy had started early in the morning, when he had awoken to the smell of bacon frying on the stove. The bacon had been accompanied by waffles, and the waffles had been accompanied by chocolate ice cream, due to an egregious lack of maple syrup in Emily's pantry. There had also been cup after cup of fresh-brewed coffee. Emily had meant it when she had promised him breakfast in bed.

After breakfast, Emily had suggested that they stop by Reid's apartment on the way to lab, so he could take a shower and change, but Reid had rejected the idea for two reasons. First, he was eager to get to lab, so he could start tackling the prion problem. Second, he was only going to lab, where the unkempt unbathed state was almost a badge of honor. At 9 AM, as promised, the two infiltrators arrived at FDA Headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland.

In lab, Reid schooled Emily on the protocol for peptide synthesis until the acronyms, abbreviations, and portmanteaus filled all the interstitital space between the molecules in the atmosphere. At first, Emily had felt completely inept, but after a couple of hours, she had discovered that mixing chemicals according to established protocols was truly a job that a trained monkey or graduate student could do. Once she had learned to stop dropping white powders on the floor and spilling colorless liquids on the bench, Reid had determined that she could perform the repetitive procedures on her own while he mustered all his mental faculties to rid the world of CrCSp.

By lunch time, Emily had produced a small peptide of 6 amino acids, only 200 more to go. Reid had designed several peptides _in silico_, with sequences that would supposedly fold into structures that imitated the conserved structural motifs of known prions. The approach was known as biomimicry, copying the beauty or deformity of nature to impose one's will upon the subject, natural or unnatural.

An hour-long break for lunch at a nearby Subway, and it was back to the lab for more. In the large bright room, with the blinds pulled up to display a dreary gray outdoors, the partners worked in comfortable silence. Long ago, they had dispensed with "please" and "thanks" whenever one requested something from, or passed something to, the other. By dinner time, Emily had produced a set of 20-residue peptides, and Reid had produced a scheme that would guide the synthesis of larger peptides and their eventual ligations.

In this tedious plodding manner, hours and days and nights would have to pass before a library of small proteins could be realized. This was only the first day, so Reid suggested an early break at 6, when it was already dark and freezing outside. They drove back home, stopping by Reid's apartment on the way to pick up some clothes. At home, Emily stuck a frozen pizza into the oven and popped open a bottle of Cabernet Robitussin. They stuffed themselves on "It's not delivery, it's DiGiorno", but held off on the cough syrup, because Emily still had to spend the rest of the evening practicing IQ tests. After the first test, when Reid had asked her how it had gone, Emily had refused to disclose her IQ score, insisting that like ages over 30, IQ scores under 150 were not to be mentioned in public until they reached 150 and she could brag about them to Morgan and Rossi.

By midnight, all was quiet in slumbering silence. Tomorrow was Sunday, another cold wintry day to be warmed up by the now familiar routine. The next day was Monday, when the day job would become the night job, but everything else would remain the same. Before he fell asleep on the couch, Reid's last waking thought, so flimsy that it was barely thought at all, confused him and hinted at more confusion to come.

"How wonderful," Reid thought, "To have breakfast, lunch, and dinner with Emily this day..."

"And the next and the next and the next..." Emily thought in her own warm nest.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

"Reid, do you feel like we're missing something?" Emily looked up from a microplate containing a library of proteins.

"Missing something?" Reid squinted into a glass vial, agitating it to dissolve the lyophilized protein within. "What do you need? Flask? Microplate? Pipettor? Are we out of buffer already?"

"No!" Emily shook her head impatiently. "I'm not talking about lab equipment. I'm talking about the case. We know that Lee and Maynard are eugenics fanatics, but what about Ames and Hawkins? What are their roles in the project?"

"Does it matter?" Reid labeled the vial with a Sharpie. "Maybe they're both in on it. Maybe one is, and the other isn't. Maybe neither one knows anything about the true nature of the study. None of that changes what we're trying to do here."

"Hawkins has gotta be in on it," Emily said. "You told me that he looked up 20 articles on CJD and myoclonic jerks. Why would his mind jump straight to CJD if he didn't know that the agent was a prion?"

"Yeah, you're right," Reid quick-scanned a set of documents as the papers flew out of the printer. "He's a neurologist, so it wouldn't be unusual for him to look up CJD, but it's definitely suspicious to be looking up CJD and myoclonic jerks right after two of the patients come down with the symptoms."

"I wonder if he's got any CJD patients under his care," Emily said. "I wouldn't want to be one of his patients. Who knows what he's testing on them?"

"Yeah, who knows?" Reid finished his various distracting activities and gave Emily his full attention. "Although if I were a CJD patient, I might not mind my neurologist testing random drugs on me. At least I'd feel like something was being done. If I'm going to die anyway, then I might as well play my part as a guinea pig. What do I have to lose? My brain? My life? Considering that I'm already one of the living dead, I might as well get further zombified..." he stopped abruptly, screwed up his face into an apologetic grimace, and shifted his eyes back and forth, searching for an escape from his insensitive remarks.

"It's OK, Reid," Emily forgave the unintentional lapse. "You don't have to mince words in front of me. We've known each other long enough to say exactly what we think."

"Sorry, Emily," Reid apologized. "I just meant that CJD patients and their families might be desperate enough to accept any form of treatment."

"What about after they die?" Emily steered the subject away from zombies, who, being the living dead, had nothing to do with the dead dead.

"What about it?" Reid frowned.

"CJD is a very rare disease, so a neurologist might encounter only a handful of cases during his entire medical career," Emily said. "Wouldn't he be eager to study the patients as much as possible? As far as possible? Even after their deaths? Their brains...Do their brains go to the grave with them?"

"You're right," Reid considered the question. "If I were a neurologist, I'd definitely want to collect brain tissue from CJD patients after their deaths. That's the only way to study human brain tissue extensively. Unless someone has a life-threatening condition requiring brain surgery, no one's going to let me drill a hole through his skull and cut out a piece of his brain. Brain biopsies are rarely performed for purely diagnostic purposes outside the purview of another surgical procedure."

"Is it possible to extract prions from the brain?" Emily inquired.

"Sure, prions can be extracted just like any other protein," Reid replied. "The process is simple - mash up the brain tissue, extract all the proteins, separate the proteins in a gel, run a mass spec to identify the bands in the gel. It's just like what I did with the CSF sample, except I didn't have to mash up any tissue."

"So PrP can be isolated in pure form from a sample of brain tissue?" Emily inquired further.

"Yeah, isolated, purified, amplified..." Reid stopped as he caught the drift of Emily's questions.

"Hawkins is the source of the prion agent," Emily announced. "He must have extracted the prion from one of his patients. Maybe he injected it into lab mice to test its effects on them. Maybe it made them smarter. The mice got better at running around in mazes, or whatever the criteria are for determining intelligence in mice. Does that make any sense?" she bit her lip, finding it impossible to bite her gothic black fingernails through the lab gloves.

"It makes perfect sense!" Reid declared. "If I were him, that's exactly what I'd have done. Inject the prion into mice and observe the effects. Prions aren't all identical, you know. In humans, PrP is a single protein encoded by a single gene, but there are multiple mutants of the gene that cause CJD, and even proteins with the same non-mutant sequence can fold into drastically different conformations. We don't know why it happens...why exactly the proteins misfold."

"It's one of the screwups of nature?" Emily asked. "Like genetic mutations?"

"Yeah," Reid replied. "Actually, the truly amazing thing is the rarity of screwups. With all the processes going on in all the cells of the body all the time, you'd think that there would be more screwups than there are. It's a wonder that a fertilized egg can grow into a human being without the fetus sprouting tentacles and antennae along the way."

"Are tentacles and antennae our vestigial cephalopod and arthropod features, respectively?" Emily chuckled at the vision.

"Nah, I made it all up," Reid smiled. "But not without a basis in nature. In evo devo, there's the concept of 'ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny', the idea that the development of the embryo, ontogeny, follows the same path, in terms of morphology, as the development of the species during evolution, phylogeny. For humans, we progress through fish-like, reptilian, and mammalian stages during embryonic development. By the fourth week of gestation, we all have pharyngeal slits, which look like gills, on the sides of our necks, but most of them close during later stages of development, leaving only the ear open as a fish-like structure."

"Fish don't have ears," Emily pointed out.

"Right, they have gills instead," Reid said. "Our gills are their ears. No! Our ears are their gills. No! Their ears are our gills. No! Their gills are our ears!" he finally sorted out the ramifications. "Because fish precede mammals in evolutionary history," he added as evidence for his conclusions.

"Why do all our conversations end up in these bizarre tangents?" Emily wondered.

"Because they're our conversations," Reid answered matter-of-factly.

"And why does your IQ seem to drop during these conversations?" Emily wondered further.

"Every time your IQ rises a point, my IQ drops a point," Reid explained. "We share a zero sum game IQ pie."

"That still doesn't make any sense," Emily argued. "My IQ didn't start out at 60, so your IQ has dropped many more points than my IQ has risen."

"Some natural phenomena defy explanation," Reid gave in to stupidity.

"That's actually a good thing," Emily considered. "Knowing that not everything can be explained by science, that some mechanisms remain unknown..." she drifted off, replaying the words in her mind and finding them wrong in her gut. "No, scratch that. It's always better to know. That's what I've figured out in the past couple of weeks. Even if you have CJD, it's better to know that you have it. The same for Alzheimer's."

"The same for schizophrenia," Reid said softly.

"If there were a test for schizophrenia, would you..." Emily started to ask a question.

"You bet I would," Reid answered the question before she could finish asking it. "You know what I've figured out in the past couple of weeks? Schizophrenia isn't the end of the world. There are far worse diseases - ones that completely destroy the mind, ones that trap the mind in the body, ones that bend the body into impossible shapes - and the people who have them still carry on living for years and years after the diagnosis. It seems that a human can get used to anything."

"The true definition of humanity?" Emily suggested. "The most flexible pliable malleable form of life on Earth? Nothing to do with our collective wisdom or individual intelligence."

"Have we got collective wisdom as a species? As humanity?" Reid asked skeptically.

"No, we've got collective stupidity," Emily replied. "That's what Lee, Maynard, and Hawkins are trying to cure, but they're going about it the wrong way. They're trying to cure stupidity with stupidity."

"Stupidity versus stupidity," Reid muttered to himself. "Stupidity versus stupidty!" he shouted at Emily.

"What? What? Is this another precipitous drop in IQ?" Emily leaped up from her stool to steady the stupid creature.

"Hawkins is the source of the prion!" Reid waved his gloved hands back and forth. "He must also be the source of the antidote!"

"Because the antidote is another prion that he extracted from the brain of another patient!" Emily balanced the equation.

"Yes! CrC was a serendipitous discovery, and so was the prion antidote," Reid nodded. "Well, actually..." he reconsidered for a moment. "If CrC was a serendipitous discovery, then so was the antidote. If CrC was designed and synthesized in the laboratory, then so was the antidote."

"Come again?" Emily asked.

"Designing and synthesizing proteins takes a lot of work, as you know," Reid explained. "Especially the design aspect...It takes a lot of ingenuity. It takes all my mental faculties to fold sequences into structures in my head. It's not a random process. There are certain rules to follow, but I've discovered that it's better done _in cerebro_ than _in silico_. In computer programs, _ab initio_ molecular dynamics goes only so far. The human brain is far better suited to the task, but the task is so difficult that it requires a special kind of brain with extraordinary computational abilities and working memory..."

"It requires your brain," Emily cut in. "With the processing speed and RAM of Deep Blue, the computer that beat Garry Kasparov at chess. And with human creativity, your life-like qualities."

"Right," Reid blushed a little. "My point is either Hawkins has such an amazing mind that he designed CrC and its antidote _in cerebro_, or he's got such amazing luck that he ran into CrC and its antidote from two different patients."

"Aren't both those scenarios exceedingly unlikely?" Emily asked.

"They are," Reid agreed. "My mind tells me to believe the first, but my gut tells me to believe the second. Hawkins is a well-respected neurologist, an excellent medical practitioner, but as a scientist, he hasn't done any particularly notable work. At least not work that he's chosen to publish. Then again, Einstein worked at the Swiss Patent Office until he published his Annus Mirabilis papers. That gives me hope that the first scenario is correct, because the second scenario is far less appealing."

"Why is that?" Emily asked. "An antidote is an antidote is an antidote. Who cares how it came about?"

"It does matter how it came about," Reid said. "If the antidote was designed and synthesized, then it would have been optimized as well. Not every prion that re-shapes CrC is a good antidote. Some prions might have deleterious side effects of their own. Some might cause permanent brain damage due to their own activities. Those products would have been weeded out during optimization. However, if the antidote was extracted from a patient, then there wouldn't have been anything to optimize. One patient, one prion. Who knows what other properties the antidote might have? Maybe it re-shapes and eliminates CrC only to destroy the brain itself. It could be a long-term process. The antidote was originally an agent of disease. It originally killed someone. Why not again?"

"Shit," Emily whispered as she digested the bad news. "Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit!"

Upon its invocation, shit rose up from wherever it normally dwelt and hit Emily Prentiss in the face with the ringing of her cell phone.

"Hello?" she answered. "The hospital," she mouthed silently at Reid as she listened to the voice on the line. "Yes, this is Emily Prentiss," she turned away to hear the bad news.

Reid stared at the back of Emily's head as she spoke on the phone. She said very little, mostly nodding and mumbling as the doctor explained the situation. Five minutes later, she hung up, took off her lab coat, and grabbed her purse from a nearby chair.

"What's wrong?" Reid asked.

"I'm going to the hospital," Emily said. "My mother is OK for now," she explained hastily. "But that wasn't the case earlier today. She had some kind of cardiac episode, bradycardia I think it was called. The doctors had to resuscitate her," she choked on the words. "I'm going to see her right now. When I get back, we're going to break into Hawkins's lab and steal the antidote. There's no other way. She's running out of time. I'm not sitting on my hands and twiddling my thumbs while my mother gets worse and worse."

Emily ran out of the lab before Reid could say a word. He ran after her down the hallway of the deserted building.

"Emily, wait!" Reid whisper-shouted behind her. "I'm coming with you. We can decide what to do after we see her."

"No!" Emily insisted without turning. "I know what you're trying to do! You're planning to talk me out of this with your facts and figures, but I'm not buying it! We're going to break into Hawkins's lab. If you don't want to come along, I'll go there by myself."

"Emily! Don't go there by yourself!" Reid made a swift decision. "I'll go with you when you get back from the hospital!"

"Fine, but don't try to talk me out of it!" Emily barged into the stairwell. "I'll call you in a little bit, as soon as I make sure that my mother's really OK. You can put those experiments away now. We're going straight to the source. Wait for my call!" she rushed down the stairs two steps at a time.

Reid watched helplessly at the top of the stairs as his brilliant scheme collapsed down around him. It had been too idealistic to be realized. It had been too intelligent to work. Against stupidity the likes of Lee, Maynard, and Hawkins, Reid and Prentiss could not employ their usual intelligence. They had to employ stupidity instead. Prion v. prion, stupidity v. stupidity, in the neverending cycle of shit that was synonymous with life on Earth.

* * *

Dr. Charlotte Ames stared in shock as Reid spilled the beans in her living room. As he spoke, he observed her behaviors and expressions, trying to detect signs of subterfuge. She appeared to be genuinely shocked, which convinced him of the accuracy of his profile. The scientist was the only one who was innocent.

Dr. Ames, a rising star at PhenoPharm who had been promoted to group leader at the tender age of 32, knew nothing about the true nature of the study. Reid had suspected as much from the beginning, based on Ames's narrow range of scientific interests. All her own scientific publications had been in the area of Alzheimer's Disease, as had all her recent reading material, laid out as stacks in her office for lowly janitors and lab technicians to analyze. As a scientist, she was focused to a fault. As an Alzheimer's expert, she should have been interested in CJD, but she wasn't.

Alzheimer's Disease, being a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by amyloid plaques, shared many similarities with Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. The amyloid plaques of AD were formed by aggregation of beta-amyloid, a peptide produced from enzymatic cleavage of a larger protein. Like PrPSc and presumably CrCSp, beta-amyloid had a bad habit of aggregating into insoluble deposits that accumulated around neurons, causing the cells to commit suicide through programmed cell death. Like CJD, AD was a proteopathy, a disease of protein misfolding that allowed normally monomeric proteins to aggregate. In AD, the misfolded culprit was beta-amyloid, while in CJD, the misfolded culprit was PrPSc. Misfolding of one protein could even be induced by seeding the brain with the misfolded version of another protein.

"Dr. Ames," Reid addressed the flustered scientist, "Have you ever visited Dr. Hawkins's lab at Georgetown?"

"I have," Ames replied. "It's not exactly his lab. He doesn't have a whole lab to himself. He works in a large lab shared by all the neurologists who do research on top of their medical practice."

"Do you know if Dr. Hawkins stores all his samples and supplies in the lab? Everything from chemical reagents to tissue samples?" Reid asked.

"I'm pretty sure that he does," Ames thought for a moment, not understanding where else Hawkins would store his samples. "In one lab or another...Anything that's not at Georgetown would be at the FDA."

"He stores samples at the FDA?" Reid sat up in excitement. "Do you know where exactly - the exact location in the exact lab room?"

"Yeah, the main lab on the same floor as our office at CDER," Ames said. "We share a freezer with a scientist on a different study. Stan's got two shelves of samples in there, more than anyone else."

"That's my lab!" Reid jumped up from his armchair. "There's a storage room adjoining the lab. It's got six freezers, all locked, containing archived samples from all the scientists who've worked there in recent years. Is your freezer one of those?" he smiled slightly at a nod from Ames. "I can't believe it! I can't believe that the antidote could be under my nose right now! Has been under my nose all this time! Look, Dr. Ames, I know that this information, everything that I've told you today, is hard to believe, and I don't expect you to accept it right away, but I really need your help today. Can you come with me to the FDA and help me search for the antidote among Hawkins's samples? The situation is urgent. One of the patients in your clinical trial almost died this morning."

"What? The doctors didn't call me!" Ames stared in horror. "I've known for awhile that two of the patients experienced adverse reactions to the drug, but I've been assuming that they were reactions to vorastatin, not a prion agent. I've been collaborating with the doctors on a diagnosis, but so far, nothing. Why didn't you inform the doctors about the prion as soon as you knew about it? You said that you were an FBI agent. Why didn't you shut down the clinical trial?"

"I was told, by my superiors, not to interfere with the PhenoPharm study," Reid sighed. "Believe me, Dr. Ames, I would've shut down the clinical trial if I could've. Maybe I should've disobeyed my orders and leaked the information to the media. The media always makes a huge deal out of medical discoveries. Imagine what they'd do if they heard about a medical scandal. Anyway, right now, we need to focus on getting an antidote for our two patients, and I'm sure that Hawkins has it."

"Do your superiors know that you're leaking this information to me?" Ames asked.

"No," Reid admitted. "As I mentioned, I also visited Dr. Lee without the consent or knowledge of my superiors. My partner on the case is the daughter of one of the patients. She's at the hospital right now, visiting her mother who had to be resuscitated earlier today, after an episode of bradycardia."

"Bradycardia," Ames frowned, "Abnormally low heart rate..." the cogs began turning.

"Caused by excessive levels of acetylcholine," Reid finished. "I discovered the acetylcholine spike in the CSF sample. It's presumably caused by the prion agent, but I have no idea how. I don't care about the exact mechanism of the disease process. As you know, Dr. Ames, the pharmaceutical industry is more about imposing our will upon diseases than understanding their exact mechanisms. What do statins have to do with the mechanism of Alzheimer's? Who knows? Who cares, as long as it works? The cause of the disease is often an unknown subject. In the FBI, we'd call it the UnSub."

"If you do find the antidote among Stan's samples, what then?" Ames asked.

"I'm going to do a detailed analysis of the sample, including testing the antidote in rodents, before using it on any of the patients," Reid answered.

"If I may, I'd like to help you with the analysis," Ames stood up from the couch, her expression a mixture of resolve and anger. "Let's head over to the lab right now. As you said, the situation is urgent. Stan never comes in on the weekends, so we don't have to worry about running into him there."

"Thank you, thank you, thank you! Thank you, Doctor!" Reid led the way out of the apartment.

"My pleasure, Doctor," Ames replied as she locked the door behind her. "Considering that my...PhenoPharm's...clinical trial was the one that was targeted by these wackos, it's the least I can do to help."

"Nevertheless, I really appreciate..." Reid stopped in mid-sentence to answer his ringing cell phone.

"Emily?" Reid spoke into the phone. "No, I'm not at lab right now. I'm with Dr. Ames. We're heading over there right now. Can you meet us there in a little bit? Alright...I'll explain everything later, but we think that Hawkins has got a sample of the antidote at the FDA," he hung up with a nod and turned to Ames. "My partner," he pocketed the phone and opened the car door to let her in.

Half an hour later, Reid found himself with a hammer and chisel, scraping away at the ice inside the -80 freezer. Having not been defrosted in many moons, the freezer was basically a monolithic block of ice containing colorful sample boxes, suspended in mid-ice like Oetzi the Iceman within his glacier in the Italian Alps. Reid was unable to wrap his mind around how the boxes had gotten into the ice following the glaciation of the freezer, so he concentrated on the hammer and chisel instead. Emily tried to apply an industrial grade blow dryer to the ice, but Ames reminded her that the heat that thawed the ice would also denature the protein samples.

Another half hour later, Reid found himself holding protein samples up to the light, trying to interpret the chicken scratchings that served as labels for the contents within. Emily had the right idea, passing each vial and tube under a magnifying glass to read the Sharpie markings upon them.

"What would Hawkins have labeled the antidote?" Emily asked. "Probably not 'The Antidote'?"

"Probably not," Reid said. "Maybe a patient name or number, after the patient that the prion came from? Like Ebola Zaire, the strain of Ebolavirus that caused the first outbreak of Ebola in Zaire? Did you know that there's a strain called Ebola Reston that killed a bunch of lab monkeys in Virginia back in the '80s?"

"Lab monkeys as in..." Emily paused her activities.

"Lab monkeys as in lab monkeys, macaques from the Philippines," Reid said. "What were you expecting?"

"I was thinking lab monkeys as in people like us," Emily admitted sheepishly. "It's really scary that Ebolavirus was right down the road from us."

"It was a strain that only affected monkeys," Reid said. "Although I suppose that it could have made the interspecies jump, like chimpanzee SIV to human HIV, if it had found a susceptible host among us."

"So it's all a matter of susceptibility?" Emily asked. "Like my mother and Isabella Torres being susceptible to the prion and everyone else remaining perfectly healthy while taking it?"

"Yeah, that's a pretty accurate assessment," Reid set down one sample box to pick up another.

"You said that the name of the prion agent was CrCSp?" Ames interrupted the discussion. "To match PrPSc?"

"That's what Maynard told us," Emily answered. "It doesn't even stand for anything. Its only purpose is to match PrPSc. Talk about obsessive..."

"I've got a tube here, labeled CrCSp, and next to it, another tube, labeled CrCP," Ames held out two tubes of different colors.

"CrCP to match PrPC, the normal form of the protein," Reid mused. "That's gotta be it. It has to be...Maybe," he looked at Emily for confirmation.

"It could be a mislabeling," Ames suggested. "P and Sp, only one letter difference."

"Emily, does this P look capitalized to you?" Reid passed the tube to her. "If it's capitalized, then it's definitely not a mislabeling."

"It's big enough to be capitalized, compared to the C in CrC," Emily looked at the letters every which way. "The P is much bigger than the lowercase r," she wondered, extremely briefly, about how her life had devolved into interpreting the capitalizations of letters on frozen tubes.

"The only way to know for sure is to mass spec the samples," Reid declared.

"Why don't we start on that right away?" Ames said. "Eventually, we're going to have to test the antidote in rodents. That'll take some time, so we'd better get started ASAP. I have access to the rodent facilities here. I can request as many lab mice as I want."

"Let's do it!" Reid said excitedly. "It's a good thing that there are multiple tubes of both samples. Otherwise, we wouldn't have enough for all our experiments."

"Stan must have mashed up a lot of brain tissue to get those," Ames shook her head. "I still can't believe that he's doing this. You've never met him. He's the nicest, most unassuming guy. A perfect bedside manner for a doctor too. I guess you can't judge a book by its cover."

"I guess not," Reid agreed. "Hey Emily," he remembered something, "Can you look through the rest of the samples and put them back into the freezer afterwards?"

"Sure, but what about the ice?" Emily asked. "How are we going to replace the ice that we chipped away?"

"Huh," Reid gaped at the chunks of ice all over the floor. "I know!" his cogs ground out a solution. "Let's put a note on the door, saying that the freezer was partially defrosted due to an electrical malfunction that shut it off for several hours. For the lie to sound convincing, we need to scrape out all the other shelves too. It wouldn't look right if only two of the shelves were defrosted."

"I'll take care of it," Emily offered. "Go! Shoo! Off to lab with you!"

"Yes, Taskmaster, call me if you need anything, Lab Monkey," Reid exited the storage room before the primate could bite back.

Emily looked through the window, watching Reid turn the corner out of sight. She resumed her earlier activities, looking through the remaining samples to make sure that they hadn't missed anything. Afterwards, she arranged the sample boxes on the shelves and picked up the hammer and chisel. She smiled as she attacked the ice. She forgave Reid for his unilateral action of the day - approaching Dr. Charlotte Ames to spill the beans about the investigation. She was secretly pleased that there was someone who would throw caution to the wind to take unilateral action on her behalf. She was secretly jealous that that someone was now working with a different female in the adjoining room, but she reminded herself that he was still working on her behalf. Everything that he had done in the past couple of weeks had been on her behalf, whether he knew it or not. Emily chipped away at the ice, enjoying the snow and hail falling from the shelves onto the floor. She enjoyed her own falling, to an old adage as ancient as the mystical alchemists who had coined it, "Chicks dig labmen."

Eight hours later, in the wee hours of a Sunday morning, a chick dug a labman so much that when he announced that the sample was indeed a prion and that the prion was likely the antidote, she picked him up, bodily, and twirled him around and around as he screamed and flailed and loved every second of it. By that time, Dr. Charlotte Ames had gone home, so she was not there to see the spectacle and lament the unprofessional conduct of federal agents. By that time, the only person remaining on the floor was Dr. Stanley Hawkins, who, as a medical doctor, carried around syringes of epinephrine and atropine in his medical kit, just in case anyone went into cardiac arrest in front of him.

Atropine, an anti-cholinergic substance used to treat bradycardia, was a poisonous hallucinogenic alkaloid found in plants such as deadly nightshade, mandrake, and jimsonweed. It was named after the Greek goddess Atropos, one of the three Fates, who chose, for each mortal, the exact mechanism of his or her death.

* * *

Note: Why can't RoBunnyBot let the poor dears have one happy moment without introducing a syringe of doom? Because RoBunnyBot is an evil hateful creature who subsists on slime and the pain of others. (insert maniacal laughter here)


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

"Anticholinergic toxidrome," Dr. Stanley Hawkins labeled the physiological effects of atropine overdose. "Hyperthermia, mydriasis, anhidrosis, vasodilation, psychosis," he recited the symptoms. "Leading to cardiac arrest and death," he summarized the prognosis.

Hawkins held the needle of the syringe over the side of Emily's neck, up against the carotid artery that carried blood from the heart to the brain. His hand shook, so the tip of the needle wandered over the surface of her neck, one second threatening to nick the carotid artery, another second threatening to prick the jugular vein that carried blood from the brain to the heart. Either way, death was the result.

Emily glanced sideways and downwards at the needle, wondering how she had gotten herself into this mess. She could feel her pulse against the needle, or was it the needle against her pulse? At least she was in the hands of a trained medical practitioner.

Reid stared at the neurologist. Among all the things that he could stare at, he found the neurologist the most disturbing. He shifted his eyes to stare at Emily instead. He stared at her and the needle against her neck. There was no way that he was going to let the drug enter her body.

"Dr. Hawkins," Reid addressed the neurologist in a soft pleading tone that gave the man the upper hand. "Please put down the needle. Let's talk about this without the needle. We're unarmed. We won't make a move if you put down the needle."

"Give me a break," Hawkins snapped, the shaking of his hand incongruous with the sharpness of his tone. "There's no way I'm letting go of her! You're FBI agents, both of you."

"Yes, we're FBI agents, but we're only profilers," Reid said. "We don't carry guns. Guns are not allowed at the FDA. We're no threat to you. I promise."

"Just like you promised to develop a gene therapy protocol in exchange for the antidote?" Hawkins sneered, suddenly emboldened by a sense of wronged righteousness.

"I know that we haven't held up our side of the deal," Reid admitted. "And we're sorry about that. We really are..."

He widened his eyes and nodded, trying to convey his sincere regret. In this moment, his regret was sincere in every way. Reid wished that he had followed through with the deal, neglecting to recall that he would never have tested anything on Emily. Right now, preventing the drug from entering her body was the only thing on his agenda.

"We still have time to develop a gene therapy protocol," Emily spoke up. "We can start right now. Reid, you told me that you've got some ideas..."

"You shut up!" Hawkins pushed the needle against the skin of Emily's neck until the stainless-steel cannula bent, but did not break. "Was it your smart-alecky idea to renege on the deal? Was it your dumb idea to steal the antidote?"

"No!" Reid shook his head emphatically. "She had nothing to do with it!" he gestured at Emily. "It was my idea to steal the antidote. She didn't even know about it. I did it on my own this afternoon. I took unilateral action. It's not her fault. Please let her go..."

"Nice try, Dr. Reid," Hawkins hissed through bared teeth. "Do you really think that I'm going to give up my advantage to a pair of FBI agents?"

"What do you think we're going to do to you?" Reid hissed back. "We don't have our weapons with us. Do I look like the fighting type to you? I'm a scientist, just like you."

"I'm not a scientist," Hawkins corrected him. "I'm a physician. You play around with tubes and vials in a lab. I help people!"

"I know...You're right," Reid agreed with Hawkins. "You're trying to help people with the prion agent. CrCSp, the agent that raises IQ in your experiments? That increases intelligence and intellectual achievement, one human at a time? That evolves the human species as a whole?"

"No!" Hawkins frowned angrily. "I'm not Sandy Maynard. Don't confuse me with her! I could care less about human evolution and the Great Leap Forward. I don't care if people are smart or stupid. All I care about is that I produced something worthwhile."

"After years of losing, you finally won," Reid profiled the neurologist. "You've been trying to help people all your life, and now you finally have something to show for it."

"Trying and failing," Hawkins muttered.

"Trying and failing, but not through any fault of your own," Reid said. "You've spent your career dealing with the most devastating disorders that afflict the human brain, the ones that destroy the mind itself. Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's, ALS - the neurodegenerative quartet. Add in CJD and all the other spongiform encephalopathies, all the proteopathies. The problem was intractable, and it still is, but you've finally wrenched something out of it, right? Your efforts were not wasted. You've found...diamonds in the dung."

"Diamonds in the dung," Hawkins nodded with a chuckle. "Quite a way with words you've got there, Dr. Reid."

"Not really, Dr. Hawkins," Reid brushed off the compliment. "You're the one who's got a way with words. CrCSp to match PrPSc and CrCP to match PrPC. You isolated both prions from the brains of dead patients, right? You hit the jackpot twice in one career."

"I couldn't believe it," Hawkins said. "At first, I couldn't believe that CrCSp increased intelligence in rodents. In mice and rats, the prion formed plaques, quickly, much faster than any other prion, but the plaques were limited in scope. They didn't take over the entire brain, as prion plaques usually do. They didn't kill the cells or turn the brain into mush. I was so surprised! The prion had originally killed someone, but he must have been one of the non-receptive ones, like Elizabeth Prentiss and Isabella Torres. In everyone else, CrCSp has had only beneficial effects. I couldn't begin to guess at a mechanism. I don't know if I'll ever figure it out."

"Probably not," Reid said. "Another intractable problem...The underlying mechanism of human intelligence."

"I never published my results," Hawkins continued. "I had never gotten permission to extract the brain of the original patient, so I couldn't very well publish any results based on that patient. A few years later, I ran into CrCP. Again, I was flabbergasted by what I had discovered. I couldn't believe that CrCP actually cleared away the plaques created by CrCSp. Clearing away the plaques required the re-shaping of one prion by another. Here was a matched agent-antidote pair, whichever prion you assigned as the agent and whichever prion you assigned as the antidote. I couldn't believe it. I was so lucky! It was all so beautiful!"

"You tested the agent and the antidote in rodents," Reid said. "The clinical trial is the first time that you've ever tested the agent in humans. But the antidote? Have you ever tested the antidote in humans?"

"No," Hawkins shook his head. "Only in rodents..." his eyes lit up with understanding as he caught Reid's drift.

"Here's your chance," Reid pointed out. "You can test your antidote in humans at last, in Elizabeth Prentiss and Isabella Torres. A matched agent-antidote pair to complete the experiment."

"Give us the antidote," Emily said. "We can help you. I can test it for you. On my mother. She's running out of time. I'd do anything to help her."

"She's right," Reid said. "Let us test the antidote for you. We can help each other. Don't you want to see how a human brain responds to the antidote? Maybe the antidote is a cure for CJD, for all the spongiform encephalopathies. No one will care that you isolated the original agent without permission. Your discovery is too important to be scrutinized. Those little details will be overlooked. You're going to get the recognition that you deserve...fame, fortune, the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology...Dr. Stanley Hawkins, Nobel Laureate."

"You're going to make sure that it doesn't happen," Hawkins stared coldly.

"We're not going to apprehend you for your role in the clinical trial," Reid reassured the neurologist. "I'm an FBI agent, but I'm also a scientist. I recognize the importance of your work. You should be allowed to continue. I see the beauty in your work. I would never do a thing a stop you. I won't be reporting you to my superiors. As far as we're concerned, you have no role in the clinical trial. You can go ahead and publish your results. There's no need to mention the clinical trial. You can start a new clinical trial of your own. CrCSp to improve the brain, CrCP to save it. The antidote clears away CJD plaques. Maybe it'll also clear away Alzheimer's plaques. You could be sitting on the cure for Alzheimer's Disease!"

"It all starts here and now," Emily interjected, twisting her neck away from the needle in order to speak without touching the tip. "Let us test the antidote on my mother. It's the first step. Everything else will follow."

"I don't believe you," Hawkins said. "I don't believe a word you say. You reneged on the previous deal. You're going to renege on this one as well. As soon as I give you the antidote, as soon as I take this needle off her neck, you're going to arrest me and put me away for life."

"No! We would never do that! You're too valuable a mind to be arrested and put away," Reid argued.

"But that's exactly what you're planning to do," Hawkins said. "You're going to put me away so you can take credit for my discoveries. You're going to analyze the antidote in the lab, figure out its structure, find a way to synthesize it from scratch, go a few steps farther than I have."

"Believe me, Dr. Hawkins, I would never be able to pass off your discoveries as my own," Reid tried to placate the man with reason. "How would I have found time to make these discoveries? I spend all my time running around the country chasing down serial killers."

"You're a genius with an IQ of 187," Hawkins said. "People will believe you when you claim my discoveries as your own. I'm not going to let you do that. Those vials," he tilted his head at the ice bucket containing the thawed prion samples. "Are those my samples?"

"Yes," Reid nodded warily.

"I want you to open them, one by one, and pour them down the drain," he tilted his head at the sink.

Reid stared at the neurologist, frozen by the unexpected order. Despite his vociferous denials, the neurologist was absolutely convinced that Reid was going to usurp his work. He would rather destroy his work, the product of elbow grease and luck combined, than have someone else take credit for it.

"Please don't do this, Dr. Hawkins," Emily whispered. "You can take the samples. We're not keeping them from you."

"You've already analyzed the samples," Hawkins said. "You've collected several microliters and frozen them away for safe-keeping. A few microliters is all you need to amplify the prion. Protein misfolding cyclic amplification...You've heard of the process, haven't you, Dr. Reid? You know that it's easy to amplify a tiny amount of prion in an excess of the normal protein. That's what prions are - infectious proteins. They exist to multiply."

"What can I do to make you believe me?" Reid asked. "I don't have any samples stored away. I can delete all the experimental results from the computer. It'll be like I never knew about the prions in the first place."

"That's not good enough," Hawkins rejected the offer. "This is your last chance, Dr. Reid. I want you to pour my samples down the drain, along with every other tube and vial of every other substance in this entire lab."

"Most of those tubes and vials aren't even mine," Reid argued. "I can't pour everyone else's work down the drain."

"You can if you have to," Hawkins pressed the tip of the needle against Emily's skin and placed his finger over the plunger.

Reid eyed the needle - the tip and the cannula - and the syringe - the barrel and the plunger. He looked at Emily. He made the only decision that he could make. He shuffled slowly towards the sink. He grabbed the ice bucket and took one last look at the colorful tubes within. He hoped the Emily would forgive him someday.

"Don't do it, Reid. Please don't do it," Emily begged in a tiny whisper, not daring to stretch her vocal cords for fear of the needle.

"I'm sorry, Emily," Reid said softly without looking at her. "It's all my fault, I know. I got the profile wrong. I trusted Ames. I thought, wrongly, that the scientist was the only one who was innocent. That's what I wanted to believe, but I was wrong. She was in on the project too. She informed him, as soon as she left here tonight."

"What are you talking about?" Hawkins barked out a hard laugh. "Ames doesn't know anything about the project. We're only taking advantage of her for the clinical trial."

"Then how did you know that we would be here tonight?" Emily asked.

"I did a little profiling of my own," Hawkins replied. "What's profiling? Getting into people's brains? I've spent my entire career getting into people's brains! You don't have a monopoly on that! After Lee and Maynard told me about your visit, I did some research on you, the two of you. I read up on you, Dr. Reid. I followed you around - lab to home, lab to home, lab to home...You two seem to be living together now. I knew that you'd get smart-alecky and figure out a way to renege on the deal. I knew that you'd never have the guts to test anything on her. You hide your weakness behind a veil of ethics, thinking that you're so high and mighty, doing good for the world, running around the country chasing serial killers. You should be ashamed, Dr. Reid. Someone with your intellect should not be doing what you do for a living."

"I _am_ ashamed," Reid agreed. "I should be using my intellect for some higher purpose, something more important, than what I do in the FBI. I should...I should've..." he opened the first tube and poured the contents down the sink.

"Reid, stop it!" Emily cried as she opened all her boxes and poured the contents into her brain. "Don't do it! Please don't do it! We need those...I need those..."

"I should never have gotten distracted," Reid said. "This whole stint in the BAU...It was nothing but a distraction. It was procrastination. I should've been using my natural-born talents for a different purpose," he poured a second tube down the sink. "The problem that could not be named or shared or solved," he opened two more tubes and poured them simultaneously down the sink.

"Please, Reid," Emily let the tears roll down her cheeks. "I need those...They're the only things I have...My mother is the only thing I have..."

"I'm sorry, Emily," Reid opened the final two tubes. "I'm going to pour everything down the drain. Our experiments too...I'm sorry that all your hard work is going to waste. I'm so sorry," he sniffled slightly. "These samples," he held the tubes up to the light. "They're the only things you have to keep your mother alive. You want to help her so much. You'd give anything to help her. I understand. For a few minutes, before he came in, you thought that you had found the solution. You had! But it wasn't the result of your own hard work, so it's not really yours to keep. I'm sorry that I couldn't do better for her," he sniffled harder. "Or for you," he poured the tubes down the drain. "Back to square one," he turned on the faucet to wash away the milliliters of liquid.

When he turned to face Emily, she could see that he was crying, his tears matching her tears. Seeing his tears through her tears, she collected her sadness, frustration, and anger from where they ran rampant in her brain and compressed them into a shining glittering diamond. Her last coherent thought, before the physician emptied the syringe into her neck, was that the tubes, with their contents swirling towards the Potomac, had never been the only things that she had.

* * *

"Hot as a hare, blind as a bat, dry as a bone, red as a beet, mad as a hatter," Dr. Stanley Hawkins recited the mnemonic that described the physiological effects of atropine overdose. "Dead as a doornail," he summarized the outcome.

Hawkins held the needle of the syringe over the side of Reid's neck, up against the carotid artery that supplied the brain with oxygenated blood via the aorta. His hand shook, so the tip of the needle wandered over the surface of his neck, one second threatening to nick the carotid artery, another second threatening to prick the jugular vein that voided the brain of deoxygenated blood through the superior vena cava. Either way, "dead as a doornail" applied.

Reid glanced sideways and downwards at the needle, wondering how he had gotten himself into this mess. He could feel his pulse against the needle, or was it the needle against his pulse? At least he was in the hands of a trained medical practitioner this time.

Emily stared at the neurologist. Among all the things that she could stare at, she found the neurologist the least disturbing. She couldn't look at Reid, because there was a needle against his neck, and she couldn't look at the needle, because the needle was against Reid's neck. She boxed up all the other images and focused in on the neurologist instead.

"Dr. Hawkins," Emily addressed the neurologist in a soft pleading tone that gave the man the upper hand. "Please put down the needle. Let's talk about this without the needle. We're unarmed. We won't make a move if you put down the needle."

"Give me a break," Hawkins snapped, the shaking of his hand incongruous with the sharpness of his tone. "There's no way I'm letting go of him! You're FBI agents, both of you."

"Yes, we're FBI agents, but we're only profilers," Emily said. "We don't carry guns. Guns are not allowed at the FDA. We're no threat to you. I promise."

"Just like you promised to develop a gene therapy protocol in exchange for the antidote?" Hawkins sneered, suddenly emboldened by a sense of wronged righteousness.

"I know that we haven't held up our side of the deal," Emily admitted. "And we're sorry about that. We really are..."

She widened her eyes and nodded, trying to convey her sincere regret. In this moment, her regret was sincere in every way. Emily wished that she had followed through with the deal, neglecting to recall that no one could have come up with a gene therapy protocol in the time that she had before her mother's brain turned into mush. Right now, preventing her mother's brain from turning into mush was not at the top of her agenda.

"We still have time to develop a gene therapy protocol," Reid spoke up. "We can start right now. I've got some ideas..."

"You shut up!" Hawkins pushed the needle against the skin of Reid's neck until the stainless-steel cannula bent, but did not break. "Was it your smart-alecky idea to renege on the deal? Was it your dumb idea to steal the antidote?"

"No!" Emily shook her head emphatically. "He had nothing to do with it!" she gestured at Reid. "It was my idea to steal the antidote. It's not his fault. Please let him go..."

"Nice try, Agent Prentiss," Hawkins hissed through bared teeth. "Do you really think that I'm going to give up my advantage to a pair of FBI agents?"

"What do you think we're going to do to you?" Emily hissed back. "We don't have our weapons with us. Does he look like the fighting type to you? He's a scientist, just like you."

"I'm not a scientist," Hawkins corrected her. "I'm a physician. He plays around with tubes and vials in a lab. I help people!"

"I know...You're right," Emily agreed with Hawkins. "You're trying to help people with the prion agent. CrCSp, the agent that raises IQ in your experiments? That increases intelligence and intellectual achievement, one human at a time? That evolves the human species as a whole?"

"No!" Hawkins frowned angrily. "I'm not Sandy Maynard. Don't confuse me with her! I could care less about human evolution and the Great Leap Forward. I don't care if people are smart or stupid. All I care about is that I produced something worthwhile."

"After years of losing, you finally won," Emily profiled the neurologist. "You've been trying to help people all your life, and now you finally have something to show for it."

"Trying and failing," Hawkins muttered.

"Trying and failing, but not through any fault of your own," Emily said. "You've spent your career dealing with the most devastating disorders that afflict the human brain, the ones that destroy the mind itself. Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's, ALS - the neurodegenerative quartet. Add in CJD and all the other spongiform encephalopathies. The problem was intractable, and it still is, but you've finally wrenched something out of it, right? Your efforts were not wasted. You've found...diamonds in the dung."

"Diamonds in the dung," Hawkins nodded with a chuckle. "Quite a way with words you've got there, Agent Prentiss."

"Not really, Dr. Hawkins," Emily brushed off the compliment. "You're the one who's got a way with words. CrCSp to match PrPSc and CrCP to match PrPC. You isolated both prions from the brains of dead patients, right? You hit the jackpot twice in one career."

"I couldn't believe it," Hawkins said. "At first, I couldn't believe that CrCSp increased intelligence in rodents. In mice and rats, the prion formed plaques, quickly, much faster than any other prion, but the plaques were limited in scope. They didn't take over the entire brain, as prion plaques usually do. They didn't kill the cells or turn the brain into mush. I was so surprised! The prion had originally killed someone, but he must have been one of the non-receptive ones, like Elizabeth Prentiss and Isabella Torres. In everyone else, CrCSp has had only beneficial effects. I couldn't begin to guess at a mechanism. I don't know if I'll ever figure it out."

"Probably not," Reid said. "Another intractable problem...The underlying mechanism of human intelligence."

"I never published my results," Hawkins continued. "I had never gotten permission to extract the brain of the original patient, so I couldn't very well publish any results based on that patient. A few years later, I ran into CrCP. Again, I was flabbergasted by what I had discovered. I couldn't believe that CrCP actually cleared away the plaques created by CrCSp. Clearing away the plaques required the re-shaping of one prion by another. Here was a matched agent-antidote pair, whichever prion you assigned as the agent and whichever prion you assigned as the antidote. I couldn't believe it. I was so lucky! It was all so beautiful!"

"You tested the agent and the antidote in rodents," Reid said. "The clinical trial is the first time that you've ever tested the agent in humans. But the antidote? Have you ever tested the antidote in humans?"

"No," Hawkins shook his head. "Only in rodents..." his eyes lit up with understanding as he caught Reid's drift.

"Here's your chance," Reid pointed out. "You can test your antidote in humans at last, in Elizabeth Prentiss and Isabella Torres. A matched agent-antidote pair to complete the experiment."

"Give us the antidote," Emily said. "We can help you. I can test it for you. On my mother. She's running out of time. I'd do anything to help her."

"She's right," Reid said. "Let us test the antidote for you. We can help each other. Don't you want to see how a human brain responds to the antidote? Maybe the antidote is a cure for CJD, for all the spongiform encephalopathies. No one will care that you isolated the original agent without permission. Your discovery is too important to be scrutinized. Those little details will be overlooked. You're going to get the recognition that you deserve...fame, fortune, the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology...Dr. Stanley Hawkins, Nobel Laureate."

"You're going to make sure that it doesn't happen," Hawkins stared coldly.

"We're not going to apprehend you for your role in the clinical trial," Emily reassured the neurologist. "I'm an FBI agent, not a scientist, but even I can appreciate your work. I recognize the importance of your work. You should be allowed to continue. I see the beauty in your work. I would never do a thing a stop you. I won't be reporting you to my superiors. As far as we're concerned, you have no role in the clinical trial. You can go ahead and publish your results. There's no need to mention the clinical trial. You can start a new clinical trial of your own. CrCSp to improve the brain, CrCP to save it. The antidote clears away CJD plaques. Maybe it'll also clear away Alzheimer's plaques. You could be sitting on the cure for Alzheimer's Disease!"

"It all starts here and now," Reid interjected, twisting his neck away from the needle in order to speak without touching the tip. "Let us test the antidote on her mother. It's the first step. Everything else will follow."

"I don't believe you," Hawkins said. "I don't believe a word you say. You reneged on the previous deal. You're going to renege on this one as well. As soon as I give you the antidote, as soon as I take this needle off his neck, you're going to arrest me and put me away for life."

"No! We would never do that! You're too valuable a mind to be arrested and put away," Emily argued.

"But that's exactly what you're planning to do," Hawkins said. "You're going to put me away so you can take credit for my discoveries. You're going to analyze the antidote in the lab, figure out its structure, find a way to synthesize it from scratch, go a few steps farther than I have."

"Believe me, Dr. Hawkins, I would never be able to pass off your discoveries as my own," Reid tried to placate the man with reason. "How would I have found time to make these discoveries? I spend all my time running around the country chasing down serial killers."

"You're a genius with an IQ of 187," Hawkins said. "People will believe you when you claim my discoveries as your own. I'm not going to let you do that. Those vials," he tilted his head at the ice bucket containing the thawed prion samples. "Are those my samples?"

"Yes," Emily nodded warily.

"I want you to open them, one by one, and pour them down the drain," he tilted his head at the sink.

Emily stared at the neurologist, frozen by the unexpected order. Despite their vociferous denials, the neurologist was absolutely convinced that Reid was going to usurp his work. He would rather destroy his work, the product of elbow grease and luck combined, than have someone else take credit for it.

"Please don't do this, Dr. Hawkins," Emily whispered. "You can take the samples. We're not keeping them from you."

"You've already analyzed the samples," Hawkins said. "You've collected several microliters and frozen them away for safe-keeping. A few microliters is all you need to amplify the prion. Protein misfolding cyclic amplification...You've heard of the process, haven't you, Dr. Reid? You know that it's easy to amplify a tiny amount of prion in an excess of the normal protein. That's what prions are - infectious proteins. They exist to multiply."

"What can I do to make you believe me?" Reid asked. "I don't have any samples stored away. I can delete all the experimental results from the computer. It'll be like I never knew about the prions in the first place."

"That's not good enough," Hawkins rejected the offer. "This is your last chance, Agent Prentiss. I want you to pour my samples down the drain, along with every other tube and vial of every other substance in this entire lab."

"Most of those tubes and vials belong to the scentists who work here," Emily argued. "I can't pour everyone's work down the drain."

"You can if you have to," Hawkins pressed the tip of the needle against Reid's skin and placed his finger over the plunger.

Emily eyed the needle - the tip and the cannula - and the syringe - the barrel and the plunger. She looked at Reid. She made a surprisingly easy decision. She shuffled slowly towards the sink. She grabbed the ice bucket and took one last look at the colorful tubes within. She said goodbye to her mother.

"Don't do it, Emily," Reid followed her movements with his eyes, not daring to move his neck for fear of the needle.

"I have to," Emily choked back a flood of tears. "I'm sorry," she apologized to her mother.

"I'm sorry, Emily," Reid said softly. "It's all my fault, I know. I got the profile wrong. I trusted Ames. I thought, wrongly, that the scientist was the only one who was innocent. That's what I wanted to believe, but I was wrong. She was in on the project too. She informed him, as soon as she left here tonight."

"How could you think that she was innocent?" Hawkins barked out a hard laugh. "Charlotte is a eugenics fanatic, just like the others. I met her when she was a postdoc at Georgetown. One of the brightest minds I've ever met. Everyone thought that she was crazy to take a position at PhenoPharm when she could've become a hotshot professor. But we needed her to get that position, so we could take advantage of it for the clinical trials. She completed the triad - the administrator, the scientist, and the physician."

"Then why did she help us look for the antidote today?" Emily asked.

"The antidote!" Hawkins smirked. "The antidote isn't exactly what you think it is. It originally killed someone, remember?"

"It doesn't work?" Emily stared intently at the tubes. "It doesn't clear away the plaques?"

"Oh, it clears away the plaques alright," Hawkins laughed. "But it also happens to give the patient CJD. That what it is! A prion! What did you think you were getting? A magical elixir to wash away all your problems?"

"So it's not an antidote at all," Emily mumbled in defeat. "All this for nothing," she opened the first tube and poured the contents down the drain.

"Emily, stop it!" Reid startled her with his firm tone. "Don't do it! It's still an antidote."

"It's useless!" Emily snapped at him. "It's a prion that causes CJD!"

"Yes, it's a prion that causes CJD," Reid said slowly. "But it's also an antidote for CrCSp. It clears away the plaques. It alleviates the symptoms. The agent will kill your mother faster than the antidote."

"What are you suggesting?" Emily stared in shock. "Are you saying that we should give this to my mother anyway?"

"Yes!" Reid replied. "It's the only chance she's got! It'll cure her, and it'll give her CJD. The antidote is a slow-acting prion. It's not like the agent. It'll take years for CJD to develop. I read an article the other day. The researchers found that the incubation period for CJD could be as long as 30 to 60 years. For your mother, it won't even matter that the antidote causes the disease."

"Then it could work," Emily shook at the thought of what she was about to do. "It could actually work," she cried as she opened all her boxes and poured the contents into her brain. "Please, Dr. Hawkins, you could help someone," she begged the neurologist. "I know it's not much, but in this case, a prion could actually be a cure. Please let me help my mother..."

"Three, two..." Hawkins rolled his eyes towards the ceiling, unswayed by her pleas.

"I'll do it! I'll do it!" Emily opened up all the tubes, dropped the caps into the sink, poured the contents down the drain, and turned on the faucet to wash away the milliliters of liquid.

She stared blankly at the empty tubes. She held her hands under the water from the faucet. She steadied herself against the sink, sobbing with an inconsolable grief that was sadness, frustration, and anger all rolled up into one. When she turned to face Reid, she could see that he was crying with her, his tears matching her tears. Her last coherent thought, as the physician emptied the syringe into his neck, was that now, she had truly lost everything.

* * *

Erm...Yeah, this chapter was bizarre, even for me, but I needed to do it this way to present all sides of the story.

Next up: the conclusion. Atropine is a treatment for bradycardia caused by (already mentioned) overdose, so (already mentioned) is a treatment for tachycardia (opposite of bradycardia) caused by atropine overdose. Not in practice, but in theory, the idea is Beautiful. Btw, the psycho little mnemonic matches up with the incomprehensible medical terminology at the beginning of the chapter. :D


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

On the cell surface, the small molecules atropine and acetylcholine were ligands of the same receptor. They were competitive inhibitors of each other, who fought over the ligand-binding pocket of the receptor protein in order to impose their mutually exclusive wills upon the cell. In theory, an excess of one molecule would ameliorate the effects of an excess of the other, and vice versa.

Reid barely noticed the physician as he escaped the lab after reneging on the deal. He barely noticed Emily as she collapsed onto the floor, clutching at her throat, then at her chest, as the anticholinergic symptoms set in. He noticed only the problem and its solution, clear as the writing on the sides of Sigma-Aldrich reagent bottles. Acetylcholine. He needed acetylcholine.

The stolen CSF sample contained an excessive level of acetylcholine. When he had originally run the sample through the GC/MS, Reid had hardly dared to believe the results on the computer screen. That was why he had made up a solution of acetylcholine chloride in distilled water to act as the standard in the mass spec experiment. The CSF sample was still in the refrigerator, and so was the acetylcholine solution. The tubes sat next to each other on the tube rack. Reid grabbed a tube, checked to make sure that it was the acetylcholine solution and not the CSF sample, and drew up a syringeful of the colorless liquid, using the same syringe that had originally contained atropine. His pulse was even, and his breathing was measured, because he was confident in his ability to inject syringefuls of drugs into the human body.

"Emily, Emily, I'm here, I've got it," Reid knelt down on the floor next to Emily. "You're gonna be fine! Hold still...Just hold still for one second," he grabbed her arm to apply the needle.

Before the needle could prick the skin, Emily lashed out at her attacker. Atropine, a molecule that crossed the blood-brain barrier, was sometimes used as a recreational drug for its hallucinogenic effects. Reid didn't know what hallucinations Emily was having, but in them, he was clearly her adversary, and for some reason, she expected him to speak French.

The first thing that she did was to punch him in the face and demand something loudly in slurred French that he couldn't have understood even if it hadn't been slurred. The force of the blow sent him ricocheting off the legs of a stool and into the open door of a cabinet, causing him to knock over a glass bottle that broke and spilled its DMSO contents all over the floor. By itself, DMSO was not a particularly harmful chemical, but it did have a bad habit of making the skin completely permeable to other compounds more harmful than itself. Reid skooched away from the puddle of DMSO, but not before contacting it with the palm of his hand. He wiped his hand on his lab coat and made another grab for Emily, who had attempted to stand up, had fallen over sideways, and was now lying on the floor swirling her fingers through a second puddle of DMSO.

"Emily," Reid grabbed her arm and lined the needle up with a vein.

This time, he managed to prick the skin before Emily confronted him with a lab razor. As he skittered away from the blade, Reid wondered how she had found the strength, during an episode of anticholinergic toxidrome, to repeatedly attack him as one of her hallucinatory adversaries. She was still yelling loudly in French. He wished that he could understand French as much as he wished that he could physically subdue her.

With the same hand that had gone for a dip in DMSO, Reid steadied himself against the floor. He dipped his hand into a small puddle of some other substance. Suddenly, the mystery of Emily's incomplete incapacitation was solved. The atropine in the syringe had not made its way in its entirety into her neck. Dr. Hawkins, sweaty and shaken during the whole confrontation, must have missed on his first attempt and released some of the solution onto the floor. What Reid received, as he contacted the puddle with his ungloved hand, was a topical application of atropine, which quickly penetrated his permeable skin, entered his bloodstream, and crossed the blood-brain barrier.

The good news was that Emily had not received a fatal dose of atropine. The bad news was that Emily was no longer the only one hallucinating. Both profilers had become mad as hatters.

Reid tried to stand up, but fell over sideways when the dizziness hit him. He crawled over the tiles to a huddle near the sink. He could only make out the outline of the huddle, because his vision was extremely blurry due to mydriasis, or dilation of the pupils. The pupils were so dilated that they were almost the same size as the iris, giving him a child-like cartoonish appearance that would have driven Garcia into a frenzy of cheek-pinching and nonsense-cooing had she been present. Perhaps because he looked like a cartoon character, or perhaps because he had always considered himself to be one, Reid hallucinated that the lab was a forest, that he was Thumper, that Emily was Bambi, and that the trash can next to the sink was Flower.

"Bambi, are you OK?" Thumper asked in concern, pushing the strands of Bambi's long black hair away from Bambi's face.

Bambi responded by taking off his shoe and throwing it at Thumper's head. He screamed something in a language that Thumper did not recognize.

Thumper thumped his foot against the forest floor. He turned his huge pupils towards Bambi, knowing, without having to see, that Bambi also sported huge pupils.

"Hey Bambi," Thumper approached his furry friend. "I found the magical elixir for your mother, but I lost it."

Bambi threw his other shoe at what he thought was Thumper's head, but missed when he mistook Flower for Thumper.

"But we can still save your mother," Thumper sidled up to Bambi's side. "The last mass spec I did...There was a bubble in the syringe when I tried to inject the sample, so I wasn't able to inject all of the sample. In the syringe, there are a few microliters of the antidote remaining. We can amplify those few microliters through protein misfolding cyclic amplification. Prions...They exist to multiply."

Bambi stared at the annoying creature, who was still thumping his foot against the forest floor. He pushed Thumper's face out of his line of sight.

"Are you mad, because the magical elixir isn't really all that magical?" Thumper asked. "I'm sorry, Bambi, but that's just the way it is. We're lucky that we have an antidote at all, even if the antidote causes disease. For your mother, the disease might never appear. Can we give her the antidote, please? Can we, Bambi? Please?"

Bambi, enraged by the suggestion of giving her mother a disease, hissed at Thumper, again using a language that Thumper could not identify. Thumper shrank away, but not quickly enough to avoid the clasp of Bambi's hands around his throat. Bambi choked Thumper until Thumper's face turned even redder than it had already turned due to vasodilation, or widening of the blood vessels under the skin. Thumper thrashed helplessly within Bambi's vise-like grip. All the while, as Bambi choked the hapless lagomorph, he snarled incomprehensible threats in French. Thumper could not have responded, even if he could have breathed, because he did not know a word of French. He did not know a word, except for a single phrase that he recalled from a French-dubbed version of one of the "Bambi" movies. He struggled against Bambi's strong fingers, repeatedly sputtering half-syllables of half-words until the whole short phrase tumbled out of his mouth in one piece.

"Je t'aime," Thumper sputtered in French.

"Huh?" Bambi grunted in a non-language that could be any language at all.

"Je t'amie?" Thumper sputtered in the form of a question.

"Je t'amie," Bambi released Thumper's throat and wrapped his arms around Thumper's shoulders.

Thumper relaxed and let Bambi cradle him in his arms. He was intensely relieved that Bambi was now more interested in him as an object of adoration than as a target for violence. It only bothered him slightly that Bambi was a male deer, that Thumper was a male rabbit, and that their heterospecies homosexual relationship might not be viewed favorably by all the denizens of the forest. For now, Thumper was content to cuddle up with Bambi on the forest floor until the hallucinatory effects of the atropine half-dose wore off.

* * *

As shaken and sweaty as he had been, Dr. Hawkins had not missed on his first attempt to inject the atropine into Reid's neck. The atropine in the syringe had made its way in its entirety into his neck. At a full dose, atropine was not a recreational hallucinogenic drug. It was a deadly poison that sent the heart into tachycardia, an abnormally high heart rate that would cause cardiac arrest if the effects of the drug were not antagonized in time.

Emily recognized the name "atropine" from the hospital, where the doctors had explained that they had used atropine to resuscitate her mother from bradycardia, an abnormally low heart rate caused by excessive levels of acetylcholine. She recognized the name "atropine", but she did not immediately associate it with acetylcholine in an agent-antidote pair. Instead of rushing to prepare a solution of acetylcholine, she wasted time calling 911, waiting for the paramedics, trying to revive her friend with sheer will, which, as she knew from her experience with her mother, was not nearly enough. It was only when she gave up and hugged him to her chest that she felt his impossibly fast pulse against her skin and remembered that acetylcholine was the antidote today, just as atropine had been the antidote yesterday.

By then, there was no time for Emily to make up a solution of acetylcholine. To make up a solution, she would have had to estimate the concentration of acetylcholine needed to compete with atropine at the muscarinic receptor, calculate the amount of acetylcholine chloride in milligrams, calculate the amount of distilled water in milliliters, weigh out the compound, dissolve the compound in water, and draw up the solution into the empty atropine syringe. Even if she could have made up and drawn up the solution in record time, Emily, having never been an intravenous drug abuser, would not have been confident in her ability to inject syringefuls of drugs into the human body. She would have panicked, as she was panicking now, until she noticed the writing on the side of a Sigma-Aldrich reagent bottle on the lab bench.

"2-Acetoxy-N,N,N-trimethylethanaminium chloride," the writing read. Thankfully, another line read, just beneath the first, "Acetylcholine chloride."

Emily grabbed the bottle from the lab bench. She opened the cap and glanced inside to see a powdery white substance. She glanced at Reid, his face red as a beet and his skin hot as a hare, although Emily wasn't sure what that last phrase actually meant. She did the only thing that popped into her mind within the confines of the Food and Drug Administration.

"Reid, open your mouth, open up," Emily coaxed his mouth open, hesitated for a split second, and sprinkled a tiny shower of white powder onto his tongue.

"Can you swallow it, Reid? Can you swallow it? Please?" she shook him slightly, finding his skin hotter and drier than ever through his shirt and lab coat.

She glanced up in panic, saw a squirt bottle half-filled with a colorless liquid on the nearest lab bench, and grabbed it to squirt some of the liquid onto her own tongue. It was a stupid unthinking act of desperation, but Emily was lucky. The squirt bottle could have contained any number of toxic organic solvents, but it contained distilled water instead.

Emily squirted a tiny stream of water onto the sprinkles of acetylcholine. The liquid hit the powder, pooled briefly, and dissolved the substance away. Emily sprinkled some more acetylcholine into Reid's mouth, squirted some more water onto his tongue, panicked some more as he choked on the solution sliding down the wrong side of the epiglottis. She lifted him up from the floor and attempted to direct the impromptu solution down his throat from an upright position. It didn't work. He coughed up as much of the solution as he swallowed. This way, it would take minutes that he did not have to get enough acetylcholine into his system to antagonize the effects of atropine. Emily tried another way, holding his mouth shut with her hand as she pinched off his nose, trying and failing to get him to swallow. He coughed up the solution again, some of it coming out of his nose rather than his mouth. He bit the palm of her hand and held on with his teeth, refusing to let go until she wrenched her hand away and found a small triangle of flesh missing from the slippery appendage.

Finally, she found the wherewithal to do another thing that had first popped into her mind, not within the confines of the Food and Drug Administration, but within the confines of her warm cozy nest at home. She sprinkled some powder into his mouth, squirted some water in after it, and before the mixture could go to waste all over his lab coat, she closed her lips over his lips, pinched off his nose, blew inwards with the force of her lungs, and forced him to swallow. She did it again and again, until the elixir worked its magic, and he opened his eyes to show her his huge unfocused pupils. He was still hot as a hare, blind as a bat, dry as a bone, and red as a beet, but throughout the whole struggle, he had never become mad as a hatter. When the paramedics arrived, they had only to give him a small injection of the real antidote, physostigmine, and there was no need to apply the defibrillator. Henceforth, in the BAU, the incident would forever be known, in the vein of "Bill Nye the Science Guy", as "Emily Prentiss, Science Hero".

* * *

Through protein misfolding cyclic amplification, the seven microliters of solution in the mass spec injection syringe produced enough prion antidote to give two people Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. One person was unlikely to pay a price for the return of her life. She would die of natural or unnatural causes before the prion was likely to kill her. The other person, the younger one, was more likely to pay a price, but by the time the symptoms appeared, whether she was in her 70s, 80s, or 90s, many more years of life on Earth would have been hers to treasure or waste, according to her whim. In no case was the victory Pyrrhic. The victory was simply a victory, or as close as one could get in any world but the one of e, i, pi, 1, 0.

To Reid, it did not matter what he did not know and what he never found out. He never found out the mechanism by which CrCSp increased human intelligence. Did it act through acetylcholine? Did it act through some other neurotransmitter? No one found out, because the prion agent was extracted from the stolen CSF sample, amplified, frozen, and stored away in a vault at the FDA. It was not destroyed, but neither was it studied, for now.

The remainder of the questions also went unanswered. Why was CrCSp so harmful to some people but not others? How did CrCP re-shape CrCSp to clear away the prion plaques? Would the prion antidote work for amyloid plaques, which shared so many similarities with prion plaques? If so, could the prion antidote be a cure for Alzheimer's Disease? In most cases, Alzheimer's was a disease of old age, so Alzheimer's patients, like Elizabeth Prentiss, were unlikely to pay a price for the return of their lives. Was it right to sow the seeds of one disease to pull the weeds of another?

For the lucky ones, the newly intelligent, life did not change as much as Drs. Lee and Maynard had predicted. Through their greater intellects, a few people may have acquired greater fame or fortune or even the Nobel Prize in a subject of their choosing. The people themselves, who they were, did not change, because what made me me or you you was not as tied up with intellect as the good doctors had believed.

As for the doctors themselves, they were stopped, disgraced, tried, convicted, and thrown out of the only world they knew. Their beliefs remained the same. Their pet theories did not change. To their dying days, Drs. Lee and Maynard would believe that they had been performing a great service for the good of humanity. They would write their memoirs, and there was no doubt that they would find a publisher to spread their ideas. Their ideas would disgust some and inspire others. If there were a way to increase human intelligence to move humanity forward, was it so very wrong to go ahead and do it?

It was not the first time that such a question had been asked. Previously, it had even been answered. Sixty-five years ago, the same question had been asked, by wiser scientists, at the end of a terrible conflict, "If there were a way to end the war to spare many lives, was it so very wrong to go ahead and do it?" In their case, the wiser scientists had gone ahead and done it, and as expected, their decision was still debated to this day.

Dr. Hawkins, the physician, pled insanity. He was a physician who had been driven insane by the intractable problems that had plagued him, day in and day out, since the beginning of his medical career. Reid was not the only one who sympathized with him. So did the jury. They believed him, because each of them had also lost someone, a beloved family member or friend, to a similarly intractable problem. From the other side, they understood his struggle. In the grand scheme of things, the loss of his mind was no great loss, because his achievements had more to do with luck than with cleverness, diligence, or even federal tax dollars down the drain. In his absence, perhaps the luck would transfer itself to someone who would take better care of it.

That left only the scientist. Dr. Ames - was she guilty, or was she innocent? If she was guilty, then she was no different from Lee and Maynard. If she was innocent, then she was still guilty. Either she was guilty of being too little of a scientist, or she was guilty of being too much of one. Along the way, while she had worked with Lee, Maynard, and Hawkins, she must have noticed some small details that did not dovetail with the clinical trial as a cholesterol reduction/Alzheimer's prophylaxis study. If she was too little of a scientist, then she would have ignored the signs to push the study through. Her employer was PhenoPharm, and wherever Big Pharma was involved, so were millions of dollars and tangles of politics. It was the nature of Big Science. If she was too much of a scientist, then she would have ignored the signs to satisfy her curiosity. In her eyes, the very humans whom she was trying to help would have been reduced to chess pieces that would have been further reduced to statistics.

Reduction to numbers was a uniquely human pursuit, and we pursued it, not because we uniquely could, but because it was beautiful. Not everyone recognized that the squishy slimy world of cells and tissues and organisms, in which Atropos cut the life-thread without elucidating the exact mechanism of her cutting, was also beautiful. In the neverending cycle of shit that characterized life on Earth, there were indeed diamonds in the dung, and sometimes, as the three furry friends would have agreed, it was more fun to wade through the dung than to bump into the diamonds.

To the three furry friends was added a fourth friend, the day that Bambi tired of his heterospecies homosexual relationship with Thumper. Thumper became Bambi. Flower became Thumper. A new friend was introduced to the forest, and he - old, curmudgeonly, and wonk-eyed - became Flower. Bambi became Faline, Bambi's mate, and their homospecies heterosexual relationship was finally outed.

After the hallucinations wore off and the heart returned to its normal sinus rhythm, the forest turned back into the lab, which was used a few more times to generate a hit in the prion design experiment. The experiment had always been too idealistic to work in time, but there was no reason that the experiment should not work with time. The protein library was turned over to the scientists at the FDA. They tested its components _in vitro_ and _in vivo_, found a hit, and carried on from there. A hit was only a hit - a prion that re-shaped another prion to clear away prion plaques in the brains of a random mutant species of rodent that may or may not be a good model for their fellow denizens on Earth.

The ones who had created the library were unlikely to taste the fruits of their labor, nor did they particularly wish to. They had other concerns.

For several weeks after the incident, Emily took care of her mother. Elizabeth Prentiss, though gifted with the return of her life, had not escaped the ordeal unscathed. She had lingering problems with short-term memory. They caused her grief in the most mundane ways. On a daily basis, she would forget where she had parked her car, why she was visiting the store, which store she visiting while she was visiting it, where she was walking or driving to while she was walking or driving there. Over time, she adjusted, so the problems that were such a frustration at first became minor annoyances that no longer annoyed at all. Everyday, the Sun rose, the prions multiplied, and the human adjusted. Reid was right. A human could get used to anything.

For himself, there was quite a lot to get used to, but it was surprisingly easy to get used to it. One minute, he was eating Cheerios alone, while watching "Bambi" and falling asleep to the thumping of Thumper's foot. The next minute, he was eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner with Emily, while watching French-dubbed versions of "Bambi" and "Bambi II", trying to figure out if any of the furry friends had ever said the words "Je t'aime" on film. He thought that they had or that he had or that she had, but he could never be sure, because the wavefunction never collapsed.

Like the world of biology, the world of quantum physics and its associated knock-knock jokes was not as squeaky clean as the world of e, i, pi, 1, 0. Problems did not always have analytical solutions, wavefunctions did not always collapse when they were observed, and unlike what Werner Heisenberg had said, position and momentum could be simultaneously determined to arbitrary levels of precision. For the first time, in his newly normal life, Reid knew exactly where he was and exactly where he was going. He was sitting on the couch with Emily, and he was going to get four more chocolate bars and two more bowls of peas from the kitchen. After he returned, they would stuff themselves and watch "Bambi" again, pretending that they were the cartoon characters and making fun of Morgan and Rossi through the TV screen. It was late, and they would probably fall asleep to the thumping of Thumper's foot. No matter. Sleep brought a new day, turning here-and-now into there-and-then, smoothing there-and-then into here-and-now, until all the days blended into a magical elixir that never entered the injection port of a mass spectrometer. The nature of the substance was more important than the chemicals that composed it. No experiment was required to determine that the magical elixir was nourishing food and intoxicating drug alike.

* * *

THE END. Uh oh...The pitchforks and torches are going to come out, aren't they? Cuz I didn't bother to collapse the wavefunction? Why so much uncertainty? Because that is the true nature of experimental science - messy, screwups, blowups, spills, fumes, flames, dung...

My next totally nerdy tale will be "Chronicle", starring Rossi to be driven crazy by Reid. Rossi's going to dig up another one of his cold cases. The UnSub will make Rossi write and publish stories of old unsolved crimes in a major newspaper (online). Reid and Rossi will glean info about the UnSub through his comments on the stories and the forensic evidence from the old crimes themselves. They will collect previously overlooked evidence and make many visits to all of the following places: the morgue, the funeral home, the hearse, the graveyard, the grave, the coffin...you get the idea. Reid will realize his dream of eating food at the morgue, and Rossi will realize his nightmare of encountering his ex-wives.


End file.
